In our silence we are the same
by happycat12
Summary: Starts from 8.2 onwards, but with some changes to the Plot from there.
1. Chapter 1

_Suffering from writing withdrawal so decided to start a new fic. Only a short piece to open this as I haven't written much yet. _

_I am taking some scenes from 8.2 to start with, but will be altering some of the plot later on. _

_And in the interests of good taste and decency no shagging of Sarah Caulfield will be permitted – Got that Lucas?_

**

"Any update on Thumper and Flopsy?" Ros asked coolly.

Lucas' lips twitched slightly. "No news since the last report. And I'm curious as to whether its now your policy to name persons of interest as if they were cast members from Watership Down."

Ros shrugged, "I suppose I could go for pussies rather than rabbits if you prefer."

Lucas coughed slightly at her comment and hastily put down his coffee. "I hope Jo's making some progress with Bibi. Harry's been really twitchy lately and I don't care to hear another lecture on how we're worse than the Stoke Newington branch of the Green Party."

They both looked up as the gentle swish of the doors announced Jo was back to the grid.

"She agreed?" Ros questioned.

Jo approached them and nodded. "She'll take the punishment to get the man who did that to her sister."

During her meeting with Bibi earlier in the day the girl had revealed that her younger sister had fallen into the hands of Raston Urazov, the Tazbek Trade and Industry Secretary, who was nothing short of a sadist. Urazov had raped and tortured the girl and held her for a week before returning her broken body to her family. A plight that was a little too close to home as far as Jo was concerned. He had also murdered both of Bibi's parents. The man had to be taken down before he could gain control of his country and unleash a reign of terror on the people of Eastern Europe.

"She has a great motive for killing him and everybody will think the FSB were helping her," Ros replied.

"She'll say anything we want her to say afterwards. There'll be no comeback on us," Jo added.

"Alright," Lucas agreed, "but it won't be easy. For a start how do we set the honeytrap and get him into a hotel room?"

"You heard what he said about the English Rose. I think Jo just about falls into that category," Ros replied smoothly.

"Cheers Ros," Jo deadpanned back, indifferent to Ros' grudging compliment.

"No worries," Ros smirked.

**


	2. Chapter 2

After the shooting in the hotel room, Lucas found Jo outside – her slender form silhouetted against the railing, still dressed in her white day dress, seemingly oblivious to the increasing chill in the air and the mist clouding over the skyline.

His approach was silent and he came to rest against the balcony a metre or so from her. She didn't look up at him but kept her eyes fixed on the river that lay in front of them. He watched her face and was relieved to see that Bibi's blood had been wiped from her face.

"You okay?" Lucas asked eventually.

Her sigh was so soft it was barely audible, and then she flicked him a little glance before turning her attention back to the scene in front of her. "You know I don't think I am really. It just seems such a waste. I keep thinking about her parents, and her sister and how they would have wanted her to still be here – of how much more precious her life was because she was the only one in her family left. And man - I'd kill for a cigarette but I don't have them any more, I only had a glass of whiskey from Harry. If you gave it a couple of hours the answer might be different but right now the answer is no," she replied, turning her face briefly towards him and smiling weakly.

On an impulse he reached out his hand and brushed it against her cheek which glowed pink with the winter chill. For a second on so his hand lingered on her face, then he withdrew it as suddenly as he had placed it there, realising almost instantly that it was too intimate a touch for a colleague.

Jo. Really? He wouldn't have guessed until now that he felt anything more for her than for the others.

But then why not Jo? He had always expected that if anything were to happen with a colleague it would be Ros. Ros who was cool, emotionally disengaged, elegant. The Ice Queen – that was her role. Harry was the boss, the decision maker, Malcolm the technical whizz and Jo was the follower, the doer. And the vulnerable one – the one who was a little too fragile who you had to watch. Beautiful Jo who might crack at any second. But in some ways he was grateful that she was like that. It took the focus off him - the internal conflict within Jo which you could see churning under the surface made him seem terribly cool, calm and collected by comparison, even if inside he was far from tranquil.

He watched first as her eyes widened with surprise at his touch and then as her eyelashes flickered downwards as she looked down at the ground.

His actions left her startled and unsure how to respond to him. She and Lucas had never achieved the familiarity, the warmth she had shared with Adam or Ben. Or Zaf. Lucas always seemed to hold his distance from the rest of them and consequently she had never felt fully able to fully relax with him and always felt slightly uneasy when they were left alone together. Lucas always succeeded in making her feel at a disadvantage it was still like part of her was permanently trapped in the kitchen at Meynell's charity gala with Lucas demanding to know why she had dropped the glasses. She didn't want to answer him then and she still didn't want to have to explain her failings to him.

Lucas always seemed to succeed in holding it together so perfectly and she had to be constantly on the lookout to prevent any of the cracks in her psyche from showing.

"I – I should go and get changed," Jo started, sounding uncertain, still not quite sure what exactly had passed between them or why, but finding the silence now unsettling.

Lucas nodded, "yes" he replied abruptly, his expression impossible to read.


	3. Chapter 3

It was only a few days later that Jo was sent down to basement of the hotel where the Bendorf were holding a number of prominent business men hostage. After the siege was over Ros commented that it was indeed fortunate that Jo had been wearing her bullet proof vest which protected her from the shrapnel from Ros' bullet, otherwise events that day could have taken a very different turn.

When Lucas returned to the grid Jo came to the conclusion that he had had an even worse time of it than she had. He was soaking wet and nursing a bruised fist and a rather grim expression.

Ros smirked when she saw him, "been having an argument with an industrial size hose have we? And – no wait, let me guess – it won?"

"Fight in a swimming pool more like," Lucas replied shortly. "As well you know," he added, looking at her pointedly.

An hour later when they were called into Harry's office no one blinked at the news that a new operation was on the go.

Under orders from the Home Secretary, Section D needed to bring down an English businessman from Portsmouth who was suspected of profiteering from Al Queda in exchange for assisting Muslim extremists with a history of terrorist activity into the country through the city's port.

His name was Michael Sinclair and Harry's plan was to get to him while he was on his luxury yacht in order to minimise the danger of media exposure if things went wrong and obtain evidence of his activities.

Lucas would be placed on board as a new business associate of Sinclair's, who was interested in using the port as a entry point for his ships in the future. Jo would be his assistant. Tariq's technical expertise was also in demand and he had been placed undercover as a crew member responsible for personal service on board. Securing Sinclair's laptop was the prime objective of their operation.

Unfortunately, as they discovered after only one day on the operation, it was not going to be easy to achieve. Sinclair kept his laptop with him at all times and his bodyguard was also constantly close to him.

By the third and final day of their operation, things were becoming desperate. Harry was under extreme pressure from the Home Secretary to get the laptop, to bring Sinclair in and break up the terrorist ring. The previous day Section D had received a tip off a bomb would be placed somewhere on the transport network "in the near future" and all suspicions pointed to it being placed by a new arrival via Portsmouth.

Ros reluctantly issued orders for the team to take a fresh approach to the situation. One which would involve, Jo, who Sinclair had displayed a rather obvious partiality towards by flirting with in a far from subtle manner the previous evening after having rather too much to drink, distracting Sinclair in his room while Tariq slipped into his study in the adjoining room and downloaded the contents of his laptop.

It wasn't a plan which either Ros, Jo or Lucas were entirely comfortable with, but Ros was reasonably confident they could pull it off according to plan without any casualties.

But, as Jo was to discover, when drunk, Sinclair would turn out to be far more demanding than she had anticipated.

She tried to get him to slow down, to drag it out to give Tariq the time he needed, but he wouldn't be put off. After a few minutes of kissing, he began tugging at the zipper to her dress and she batted him away playfully saying that she wasn't that fast a girl and needed a few more drinks before things could get amorous.

Over her wire she heard Tariq anxiously asking Lucas for assistance. "Lucas I need your help. His computer has a firewall which blocks attempts to hack into it. I can override it but I need you to get the software from my room and bring it to me."

"I'm on it," Lucas replied promptly.

Inside the cabin, Sinclair had discarded his jacket, and was pressing his sweaty body against Jo, his hands roving over her body. She breathed out as he released her for a moment and felt a quiet sense of relief until she realized what he was doing now. Which was to make his way towards his study with his jacket in hand. She quickly got to his feet as his hand was on the door and he had opened the door to the room when she reached him and turned him around, kissing him with what she hoped was a convincing degree of passion.

He responded instantly and with an alarming enthusiasm, pushing her down onto the nearby bed. After a moment she tried to slip out of his hold and muttered something about needing a glass of water.

His expression turned stony and he caught her hands and pinned her beneath him as he pulled down the zipper to her dress. "No. Stop playing me. You know as well as I do why you came here this evening princess so let's get on with it."

"Ros", Lucas began sounding a warning as Sinclair's words crackled in his ear.

"Just concentrate on getting the software," she snapped, not liking where this situation was heading but determined to follow orders. "We have to get the information on that laptop – the Home Secretary will have our heads if we don't stop this thing. Jo – , you've got to hold your nerve. You'll be out of there as soon we can manage it," she finished, closing her eyes as she tried not to think of the situation the girl may find herself in.

Sinclair had succeeded in undoing the zip of her dress and pushing it off her shoulders and his hands were now working it down off her body.

She watched the clock – 5 minutes. Had it really only been 5 minutes? Tariq needed at least ten minutes to download his harddrive and erase the evidence – fifteen to be safe, and he hadn't even started yet.

Sinclair clearly wasn't going to take no for an answer and though she could hit him and get away from the situation she knew well enough that he had to be occupied otherwise Tariq would be exposed. Sinclair was a dangerous man and his bodyguard was only moments away in the bar. She couldn't afford to make a scene or to attract attention to their room. She wished she had had something with her she could slip into his drink but when they had arrived on the boat they hadn't anticipated this contingency.

She tried to force herself to relax, to shut out his face and his features and think of other things as his hand slid up her thigh, sending a chill down her spine. His touch left her cold and nauseous with apprehension about what would inevitably follow.

She wished that if he couldn't be put off he would at least be quiet about it. It made her ill to think of everyone on the grid listening to his grunts and heavy breathing and the sound of the bed squeaking with every thrust. And Lucas would be listening as well. That made her feel worse still.

She didn't see Lucas enter the study next door but looked up a few minutes later to see him making his way towards the exit. For a second their eyes met, then she looked away from him, shame washing over her. Within a few seconds he was gone, vanishing as silently as he had entered.

In the corridor outside Lucas leaned against the wall, and ran a hand through his hair. The image of Sinclair's body on top of Jo, moving over her was still implanted in his mind. Jo was all too lovely and the sight of her half naked body tangled with Sinclair's left him burnt by desire and a bitter kind of jealously. And though he had only seen her face for a second he thought it wasn't something he would forget in a hurry.

The expression on her face looked like she was dying inside.


	4. Chapter 4

Thirty minutes later Jo slipped from the cabin and closed the door, leaving Sinclair alone in there. She rested her head against the corridor as her hand moved down to remove her shoes. Once she had taken them off she made her way stealthily towards her room. What she didn't want was to meet Tariq or Lucas, wearing an expression that would remind her that they knew what had just happened in that cabin, that they had _heard_ it all or to see on their faces that they were judging her for her actions. The sense of shame inside her kept welling up but the tears stayed unshed. For now.

And she couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was left of Joanna Portman – the _real_ Joanna Portman – was left in that cabin and been trampled by Sinclair in the same way he had cast her dress onto the floor, trodding on it carelessly. Now she was nothing but a shell, not a person anymore - just an agent of the security service, a whore of the state.

She was almost at her door when a figure darkened the corridor, shutting out the light from the deck above, though she couldn't make out who it was. She hastily fished into her purse in search of her room key.

"Jo."

She looked up at the sound of a deep masculine voice to find Lucas' tall figure dangerously close to her and her heart raced a little faster. Oh God. Lucas.

She didn't want to see him. And what was he going to say to her?

Lucas took in her appearance. Her cheeks were flushed pink and strands of her golden hair had come loose from their tie. When she located her key he could see her fingers shaking as they emerged from her handbag and she smelt like whiskey – not from her because she had had only one glass of wine but from _him_ he realised with a start.

She pushed the key into the door but it wouldn't go. Or was it that her fingers wouldn't make it go. It had to open! It had to - else she would be stuck in the corridor with Lucas beside her forever, his body so close she could feel his breath on her neck and the heat from his body on her shoulder where it brushed against her.

And the thought crossed her mind that it should have been Lucas not Sinclair in that room. If it had been Lucas she wouldn't feel like she did now. Like she hated what she'd become and she couldn't bear to meet him in the eye. And Lucas would have kissed her and made love to her like he cared about her instead of thinking only of his own demands and treating her like nothing more than a cheap prostitute.

But why would she think these things and what was the point anyway? What had happened couldn't be undone.

Lucas frowned and took the key from her, his hand closing around hers gently. "Let me try."

It took only a few seconds for him to insert it into the lock and twist it open. He made it look so simple.

She had expected that he would return to his room once the door was unlocked but he followed her in, shutting it firmly but silently after him.

She didn't know what to do now and stood to the side of the door, her hands twisting the folds of her dress nervously.

Lucas strode towards the cabin window and stood there looking out at it, his back turned to her.

He was going to debrief her, she thought with mounting horror. Surely he wouldn't follow standard practice for this operation and make her give an account of the operation. An operation that had been anything but standard from her point of view.

Lucas suddenly turned to face her and announced coldly, "I don't need to hear the details but I do need to know if you think Sinclair suspected anything."

"No." Jo shook her head, her eyes focused on the cabin window on the opposite side of the room to Lucas as she replied. Outside she could see a sea gull rising and falling with the breeze and could only envy its freedom from inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cabin.

"I take it he's sleeping now?"

"Yes."

Something about the way he looked at her when she replied made it feel like a guilty confession. Like he was her lover instead of an unhappy extension to her day job

She wondered apprehensively whether he was about to about to tell her off for failing to execute the operation according to the plan. She couldn't help thinking that if only she had been a little smarter, if she could think more quickly she could have avoided that situation. She was sure that Ros would have found some way to avoid that encounter.

His next remark was as abrupt as it was unexpected. "Once we get back you should go to the doctor. The last thing we need is you getting pregnant."

She didn't look at him but he saw the distress flicker across her face at his comment. That must be something she hadn't even considered, but with no Harry or Ros about it was part of his job to consider such things. To deal with the fallout of an operation that hadn't gone according to plan and any of the 'cleanup' that was required. And right now Jo was part of that clean up.

He had an overwhelming desire to hurt Michael Sinclair right now. If he had been the one who had been with Jo, if her body had been pressed beneath him and not beneath Sinclair's, Lucas was quite sure she wouldn't look how she looked now, like she was barely managing to hold herself together, like she was in danger of breaking down at any moment. If he had made love to her it would have been done with love and passion – something that would remain an intimate secret between the two of them – not something hard and dehumanising that would leave her almost destroyed. If he had been with Jo it ...

"I will," she replied, but so softly it was hardly more than a whisper.

Lucas watched her for a minute, then frowned, turning to pace across the room. The toll it took on his self restraint not to march into Sinclair's room and deal to him right now was almost too much. But he had mastered his emotions before and he would do so now. His years in prison had taught him how to restrain his anger, though he did so at a cost.

"Right. So I understand out ETA in Portsmouth is 8am tomorrow morning. Make sure you're ready then."

He turned again to look at her briefly, and she blushed, remembering with an awful clarity the moment less than an hour ago when their eyes had met in Sinclair's cabin. She thought, as Lucas turned to leave the room without saying a word to her that everything had gone so dreadfully wrong today and it left her feeling angry and disgusted with herself. And Lucas who had seen her naked in Sinclair's arms, clearly felt the same way.

Before Lucas could leave the room, the sound of a something pounding violently against the door stopped him in his tracks, and Jo stood frozen to the spot as she tried to imagine who or what might be on the other side of the door.


	5. Chapter 5

Quick as a flash Lucas moved towards her suitcase and dug his hands under the clothes and underwear and makeup, searching for his objective. A few seconds later he managed to locate the secret compartment and emerge with a gun. Jo, who was standing several metres away paused to wonder how on earth he had known he would find it there, but any further questions were quickly erased when the door was opened to reveal the security guard holding a handcuffed Tariq by the scruff of his neck and a gun pointed to his head. Michael Sinclair stood to the side of them, an imposing figure with a gun also in his hands pointing at Jo.

"Put the gun down or Rick will blow the boy's head of, and I'll do the same to the girl," Michael Sinclair said coolly. "I don't imagine you'll find there's much fun to be had with two headless corpses," he added smirking unpleasantly.

Out of the corner of his eye Lucas could see Jo flinch visibly at his words. It had taken him little more than a split second to calculate that he couldn't take out the bodyguard and Sinclair in one shot and if he were to attempt it most likely either Jo or Tariq would be killed. Or both.

After a second Lucas put the gun down on the floor reluctantly and raised his hands in the air.

"You," he barked, pointing his gun at Jo and gesturing to the corner, "get over there now. Put your hands on your head. And DON'T MOVE," he added, positively yelling the last line.

"Now," he instructed loudly to the bodyguard, "put the boy next door, he's already in cuffs so I'm not anticipating any trouble."

From several meters away Sinclair eyed Lucas aggressively, "and while he's gone," he added pointing the gun at Lucas, "don't think you can make trouble else I'll shoot your little assistant or girlfriend or whatever the hell she is."

A minute later the bodyguard returned. "Get the gun off the ground then put these on the girl," Sinclair said, removing a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.

The bodyguard collected Lucas's gun then walked towards Jo ponting it at her and ordered her to lie down on the ground on her front. After she had done so he approached her and cuffed her hands from behind.

"Now do Mr Barker," Sinclair ordered, and added with a sneer looking at Lucas, "if in fact that is your real name. And be careful with him, he looks like a crafty son of a bitch."

Despite the imminent danger Lucas couldn't prevent his mouth from twitching at the description.

The bodyguard ordered Lucas to lie down on his front and cuffed his hands behind his back as he had done with Jo.

After he had finished he returned to stand next to Sinclair, who stood with his arms folded across his body wearing a satisfied expression on his face as he surveyed the scene. "And now," he announced in a dangerously low voice, "we are going to find out what kind of game you three are up to, starting with the boy, then moving on to you two. One of you is going to tell me why your friend found it necessary to download the contents of my laptop onto a memory chip while Mata Hari here was busy entertaining me in my room. And I have to warn you I was never really one for playing by the rules, but then again," he added, smirking, "you don't appear to be either."

Sinclair exited the room, followed by his henchman, shutting the door with a bang. Left alone inside the room Jo looked to Lucas despairingly as she considered the hopeless position they found themselves now in.


	6. Chapter 6

**

Jo considered what time it might be. About 8.30 possibly. She could recall glancing at the clock in Sinclair's room when it was 7.45 and trying to focus on the fact that by 8 it might be over and she could leave. And they were expected to dock tomorrow morning at 8am. So they could be left here for twelve hours or more before MI5 came looking for them.

She was trying not to think about Tariq right now, who was only 24 and had only been with MI5 less than two weeks. She remembered, despite the training, how inexperienced she had been when she first arrived on the grid. It was impossible to hear whether he was making any noise or not, as all sound was drowned out by the music playing loudly on the ship.

Shortly after the door was shut, Lucas turned to her and whispered urgently, "you wired?"

She had immediately regretted her decision to take off her wire and discard it in her room when she and Lucas were having a conversation she had initially feared would further embarrass her on the grid. "No," she replied, the despair evident in her voice.

Lucas swore violently at her reply. From that she took it that he wasn't anymore either, though that didn't make her feel any better.

Lucas struggled to pull himself into a sitting position and knelt uncomfortably with his hands behind his back, the cold steel of the handcuffs pinching at his wrists. When he looked up he observed that Jo had already pulled herself upright and was now sitting cross legged with her hands behind her back. Agile, that girl, he thought to himself.

He observed her shuffle herself forward and work her hands underneath her until they sat at the front of her body instead of behind. But the handcuffs were still firmly in place.

"How'd you do that then?" he asked impressed.

"I saw it done on TV once. I had to practice it though. Yoga helps too."

"I'm not sure I could master the flowering lotus position but I might be able to do that if you showed me how," Lucas replied.

It took several minutes for Lucas to perfect the action but eventually he too managed to shift his hands so that the handcuffs held his wrists in front of his body. Once he'd achieved that he got to his feet and started to inspect the room. Jo followed suit.

They spent a good 15 minutes searching the room for anything that might unlock or break the handcuffs, but the room was sparsely furnished and nothing was suitable.

Jo sat down against the wall again, her head down.

"They'll find us eventually," Lucas said after a pause. "Either this evening when they try to make contact or tomorrow morning when we don't get in to shore. We just need to hold on till then."

Jo looked up at him then, her eyes wide, "I can't stop thinking about what they might be doing to Tariq. Sinclair's the kind of man that likes to hurt people Lucas, not for any reason but just because he can and –"

"Don't think about it," Lucas snapped. He didn't want to think about Tariq. That was bad enough by itself but looking at her face made him wonder what exactly had gone on between Jo and Sinclair in that cabin and what her silence had hidden from the rest of them. The answer to that was underneath her dress in the bruises that hadn't yet shown.

"Thinking about it won't help Tariq and it won't help you either," Lucas added firmly.

For a few minutes it was quiet and then Jo started to speak. "Lucas if things get bad - would you…"

"I'm not going to kill you if that's what you're asking," he responded, not looking at her.

And then he did, only to see her lip tremble, "I think I could hold on, it's only if its really bad -"

"Christ, what are you Jo – 27? 28? You've got fifty years of living left to do. I won't do it. No way."

It was said so abruptly, so definitely that Jo fell silent.

Lucas stared distractedly out the window.

He knew the exact point of which to press to shut off a person's airways within a matter of minutes. It was simply a matter of applying pressure and holding it. It was a difficult manoeuvre to perform on yourself as there was a tendency to lose consciousness at the critical point, but not impossible. He wondered if Jo knew about the point too. Probably, if Adam Carter had trained her properly.

If she did then she would need to be watched.

Lucas moved over to the other side of the room where she was sitting and sat down beside her, moving his handcuffed arms over the top of her head and then resting his arms around her and pulling her in closer towards him. He had never been this close to her before and he noticed how her face had the slightest dusting of golden freckles and how her eyelashes seemed to be extraordinarily long. He imagined what it might feel like to have her eyelashes brush against his face and he moved his hand to rest on top of hers.

"You remind me of Adam," Jo said quietly, looking up at him. "What it was like when I was with Adam, from before."

Lucas shifted slightly, and turned his face so that her head nestled under his chin. He knew what 'before' she was referring to. The Redbacks. "It won't be like before, we'll get out, you, me and Tariq and I won't let them hurt you."

"Adam said the same thing. You're Adam all over again."

"No," he said holding her tightly, his voice suddenly fierce and his mouth so close to her cheek that she suddenly wondered if he was going to kiss her. "I'm not Adam and things will be different."

Then he took in a breath and added, " Just stay here with me quietly for a bit Jo. I need to think. "

Lucas closed his eyes as the music from the cabin next door seeped through the walls. He could feel Jo resting against his body and hear the gentle whisper of her breathing. He wished that things had been different for them, he wished that he could protect her from harm, keep her safe, but the best he could do now was to hold her.

_If I lay here  
If I just lay here  
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?_

Lucas opened his eyes as Jo sighed and shifted slightly, her head resting against his shoulder and her hair tickling against his jaw. She was cold and Lucas drew her closer towards him so that the heat from his body seeped into hers. He wondered what they were doing to Tariq. The boy wasn't trained for the field and he was just a kid. And though he had Jo now sooner or later they would take her too and he tried not to think what they might do to her. Jo knew far more than Tariq, who had been told a bare minimum, and she had the disadvantage of being both female and beautiful. He tried to block out the thoughts turning over in his mind and just listen to the music.

_Forget what we're told_  
_Before we get too old_  
_Show me a garden that's bursting into life_

_I need your grace_  
_To remind me_  
_To find my own_

_All that I am_  
_All that I ever was_  
_Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see_

_I don't know where  
Confused about how as well  
Just know that these things will never change for us at all_

_If I lay here_  
_If I just lay here_  
_Would you lie with me and just forget the world?_

Jo looked down at her hands, encased in a steel grip and held firm in Lucas' palms. She wriggled her hands loose from his, and turned his hands over so that they were face up and examined them.

They were strong and weathered. The hands of a practical man. Lined.

Her fingers ran down the line on his palm running from above his thumb to the bottom of his hand, tracing its journey until her movement was stopped by his hands catching her fingers and curling them gently within his.


	7. Chapter 7

Jo blinked as Lucas picked up her hand and examined the charm hanging from her silver bracelet, turning it around in his hand. "It's an unusual shape," he commented. "Definitely not a key but narrow and about the right size. It might just work."

"I think it's lucky," Jo replied gravely, nodding. "I had it with me when that Al Qaeda bomb went off and then in the bunker when Ros shot me and now I always wear it."

Without any warning Lucas grabbed hold of the charm and yanked it from her bracelet.

Jo looked at him crossly. It wasn't that she objected to him doing that if there was a chance it could unlock the handcuffs, but he might have at least asked first.

Lucas tried to hide his smile at her comment and replied briefly, "well, I think it's fortunate you're a rather superstitious miss."

"It's not superstition Lucas, it's fact. " Jo replied sounding irritated. "I told you I was wearing it on both days and that both times I survived. It's not just a matter of coincidence. I think I've shown that it's statistically proven that the bracelet is lucky," she stated, with a look that dared him to challenge her grasp of statistics.

She added in a voice that suggested that she thought she had cinched the argument , "After all it does have a four leaf clover on it."

Lucas remained unconvinced but confined himself to a brief, "hmmm."

"Anyway, try it out on my lock will you?" he instructed.

Jo inserted it into the lock. It slotted inside but, try though she might, it wouldn't turn.

Lucas swore, his face dark, then fell silent.

After a few minutes he announced that he thought they should empty their pockets. "You do mine because I can't reach them and I'll do yours."

Jo nodded, "ok then."

Jo reached into his pockets, trying to carefully avoid any incidents that involved touching embarrassing body parts. "There," she replied, as she dumped two items on the floor, "retrieved with no mishaps," she finished, sounding pleased with herself.

Lucas snorted, "you do look awfully pleased with yourself. You never know perhaps I might have enjoyed a minor mishap."

"Lucas pleeeaze," Jo replied, looking annoyed, "Your problem is that you're far too laid back under pressure. Now is hardly the time for you to practice flirting. You can try that out later on Ros, I'm sure she'll be receptive."

Lucas didn't think that was quite true and Jo would be well aware of that.

He surveyed the handkerchief and twenty pound note on the floor and shook his head, "I don't think twenty pounds will take us far in the bribery and corruption stakes, nor will a handkerchief."

He leaned over and inserted his hands into Jo's pocket and pulled out some lipstick, and then a makeup mirror.

He picked up the lipstick and examined it, "Hibiscus delight – the choice of every secret service operative in times of national security crisis," he mimicked, smirking.

Jo glared at him as he went for the makeup mirror. "This is more promising," he started thoughtfully. "I have an idea – let's try the key again but this time you give it a bang with the mirror too."

"Ok," she replied.

She inserted the key again so that it sat inside the lock. She couldn't hit it with the makeup mirror and hold it at the same time but Lucas managed to hold it in with his other hand while Jo gave it whack with the compact mirror.

Amazingly, the handcuffs cracked. Lucas winced slightly but made no sound then inspected the damage. "Looks like they're nearly there. Now I'm loath to ask you to hurt me again because for a girl you have quite a mean swing but I think you'd better give it another whack where the crack is showing."

Jo hit it firmly and it was enough to release the handcuffs so that they separated, falling to the floor with a quiet clink.

"Hold out your hands," Lucas instructed urgently as she turned her back to the door so that it wouldn't been immediately obvious what they were up to if they were discovered. Lucas inserted the key and her other hand wrapped round it to hold it in place. She shut her eyes as Lucas hit it with tremendous force, shattering it at once. She let out a quiet moan from where it had struck her hand and bent forward pulling her hands into the shelter of her body.

"Jo," Lucas said, moving his arm around her, suddenly concerned that he might have broken a bone, having hit her harder than he had intended to. He picked up her hand and gently tested the bones with his fingers, trying to feel if there was a break, but there was none.

"Sorry about that," he said softly, pulling her into his body for a moment to rest against his chest.

After a moment he could see her visibly pull herself together and she withdrew from him and shook her head, "no. I'm fine really, it was just a bit sore."

"Anyway," she said, taking in a breath to distract her from the ache in her hands, "what do you think we should do next?"

"Well we can't get out of this room by ourselves, we know that much," Lucas stated definitely. They'd tried the door already but it was solid oak and locked from the outside and the portholes were so tiny that even Jo couldn't get through them. "So the only option is really to wait and surprise them. To keep our hands behind our backs and let them assume we're still chained up and then take them on when they get close."

He paused and looked to her, "You up for that?"

She nodded silently, then added, "we have no other choice."


	8. Chapter 8

The thing that Jo hated the most in her job was the waiting. It seemed as if they were always waiting for something. On the grid there was usually work to be done, but when there was only waiting it made her edgy.

She stole a glance at Lucas, who seemed equally tense, and decided it would be best to occupy herself with something. Anything. She settled for selecting a birthday present for her friend Felicity.

She was considering a cd, and if so, which one, after having decided that a book voucher was too impersonal, when she detected footsteps in the corridor outside, and then the door was suddenly thrust open with a bang.

Jo felt queasy at the flecks of blood that stained Sinclair's shirt, but Lucas' face remained impassive as ever.

"Him first, and then the girl to follow I think," Sinclair stated to his bodyguard. The casualness of his tone made it sound for all the world as if he was placing an order at a fast food restaurant.

As the bodyguard moved towards Lucas, Sinclair grinned at them both and announced, "it seems your little friend's something of a pussy. A couple of blows to the head and he was crying like a baby. It will be interesting to see if you two are made of sterner stuff."

"Yes, interesting," Lucas agreed indifferently, his hands clenching into a fist behind his back.

When the bodyguard got within a metre, Lucas delivered a fearsome punch to his mid section that left him doubled over in pain, then hit him sharply on the back of his head, leaving him to topple forward, unconscious.

Simultaneously, Jo had sprung forward and was now engaged with Sinclair in a battle for his gun, which he had been holding loosely at his side. When Lucas turned his head to see what was happening it seemed uncertain who would win the struggle and he hastily moved towards the door. By the time he got there Jo appeared to be gaining the upper hand and he managed to extract the gun from Sinclair's grip without too much difficulty while she held his arms behind his back.

"Get down," Lucas said coldly, pointing the gun at Sinclair. He slid to the floor, and knelt while Jo held his hands behind his back. "Use this for the meantime," Lucas ordered, passing her his belt. She wound it tightly around his hands and fastened it.

"Now get into the corner," Lucas instructed, his eyes narrowing. "And while you're there if I were you I would start praying that my colleague's still alive because if he's not I expect you'll soon be swimming with the fishes at the bottom of the sea."

He quickly moved to the other side of the room and examined the bodyguard, who was out cold on the floor. He looked up and nodded to Jo, "ok go."

She'd been waiting for his command and fairly flew from the room in search of Tariq. Who she found several doors down in a bedroom lying on the floor unconscious. His hands were bound and his face was a bloody mess but he was still breathing. She sighed with relief, and quickly checked him over. She could see bruises on his chest and Sinclair hadn't been lying when he said that he'd been crying because she could see his tear tracts mingled with the blood on his cheeks. She reached out and stroked his face gently. Poor Tariq. God only knows what his family would say when they saw him.

She put him into the recovery position then got to her feet, returning to Lucas. "He's alive – badly injured but alive," she announced, the words tumbling out of her in a too fast rush. She met his gaze for a moment, unaware of the tears that slid down her face, mirroring those on Tariq's cheeks.

"Good," Lucas replied briefly, then looked at her strangely.

"Now. I want you to go and contact Ros and tell them to come and get us asap and that Tariq needs urgent medical attention. Can you do that?" He said the words slowly, as if she were a child.

She nodded and turned to leave the room.

Five minutes later help was on its way, and Jo had managed to find some rope from the captains deck to tie Sinclair and his bodyguard with. It was late now, perhaps ten and the two other crew she had seen on board appeared to have gone to bed for the evening, ignoring the loud strains of music still blasting from the bedroom.

She returned to the room. Lucas was still standing there with his gun pointing at Sinclair, his expression filled with disgust. Lucas took the rope from her and passed her the gun. She raised it and aimed it at Sinclair while he moved forward to tie his hands. After he had finished, she saw him step aside and look at him. His face turned dark with rage and he punched him hard in the stomach. Once, twice, three times.

Jo watched him silently, shocked. As quickly as he had begun, he stepped away and appeared once again to be in control of the situation. He moved over to tie the bodyguard's hands and then straitened up once again.

He looked to Jo. "Take me to Tariq."

They left the room, Lucas locking the door after them, and moved swiftly down the corridor to the bedroom.

"Christ," Lucas swore, as he stood frozen in the doorway. "He looks a mess."

He moved over towards Tariq and examined him. "Still alive," he stated. Saying it aloud seemed to make it more true and that gave him some reassurance.

"How far away are the medics?" Lucas questioned urgently.

"Fifteen minutes by helicopter," Jo replied, her eyes still on Tariq. He looked worse the second time she'd seen him.

She moved over to kneel by Tariq and took his hand. Lucas stood opposite, watching them.

After a few minutes Jo got up, and suddenly conscious of the tears on her face, moved her hand to wipe the tracks away. Lucas stepped forward and pulled her to him, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe. It happened so fast that when it was over she felt like she'd only dreamed it but for a few brief moments his hands circled her waist and his lips pressed against hers. His kiss was hot and hard and for a second passion flared.

"Still alive, you're still alive," he repeated to himself, letting out a breath as he released her and then turned away to check on Sinclair.


	9. Chapter 9

After the medics had rushed Tariq into the emergency ward, they had waited for five minutes with no word until Lucas had left them their details and said that they couldn't delay getting Sinclair back to the Grid any more.

When they'd returned to the Grid, Ros and Lucas had gone in to interrogate Sinclair and shut the door. Lucas had looked grim when he emerged from the room but they had managed to get the information they required from Sinclair who was to be held and charged.

Once they got the details everything because a blur of activity and worry and frantic chatter as they raced to locate the bomb which had been placed in a Manchester train station and the man who had put it there. An hour later the bomb had been found and deactivated and the man placed in custody. Tomorrow they would finish their work by breaking up the ring and tracking down the illegal migrants come into the country over the past couple of weeks.

Then there had been a team debrief which had been memorable for all the wrong reasons. They'd had an update from the hospital during the session to say that, though Tariq's would certainly live, he would be left with a permanent disability. It hadn't been immediately obvious to Lucas or Jo but his right leg had been broken in three separate places and as a result of this he would have a permanent limp which would prevent him from playing sport or indeed doing anything physical except for walking short distances. Jo closed her eyes and couldn't help imagining his face when he heard the news. Tariq was a keen soccer player and swimmer she'd quickly learned and she thought that at his age he would take the loss of his mobility badly.

Then Ros had asked Lucas had given them a run down on the situation and the replacement tech who'd come over from another department to assist them an hour ago had blithely tacked the innocent enough sounding question of "how" on to end of Lucas' comment that it was unfortunate that things hadn't gone according to plan when Jo was executing phase one of the operation by distracting Sinclair. A rather dreadful silence had followed in which the tech had looked expectantly from Lucas to her and everyone else had watched them silently while Jo had looked at no one. Lucas took one glance at Jo, who looked stricken by the comment and then cleared his throat and said in a voice that didn't invite questioning that that they didn't have time to get into details.

It was after midnight before they were released to go home – and they left Thames House mentally and physically exhausted from the day's tumultuous events.

The next day Lucas didn't appear at work and Harry had announced that he would be on leave for a couple of days and they would have to manage without him. Although no major crises had appeared on the horizon, with two officers down things were busier than usual.

To help out Ruth called in an old friend. It was something that Jo and Ruth had been whispering about for several hours before it actually happened. The two of them had been seen talking in hushed tones then falling suddenly silent whenever Ros or Harry appeared. In the end Ruth got up the courage to make the call, while Jo kept a lookout, checking to see that they weren't overheard. She was just relieved that Ruth was the one who was asking, because although Harry might be cross at first, he couldn't help but forgive her.

When she got off the phone, Jo stopped biting her fingernails and turned to her and questioned nervously, "well, what did he say?"

"He said yes, he would be pleased to."

"Oh I knew he would," Jo exclaimed, relieved, "Malcolm was always a good sort."

Later that afternoon shortly before Malcolm was due to appear on the Grid, Ruth wandered into Harry's office with a cup of tea, nicely complemented with two of his favourite chocolate caramel biscuits balanced neatly on the saucer.

He looked at her suspiciously. "Has one of my staff crashed a fleet car?," he asked abruptly.

"No," Ruth shook her head puzzled.

"Well, are you here to tell me that the Home Office has sent through another memo advising there's going to be a departmental health and safety audit and that all staff need to update the hazards register identifying all of the risks they could possibly ever be exposed to, from paperclip cuts to flying pigs?," he growled.

"Not at all," Ruth replied nervously, "why ever would you suggest that?"

"Because the last time you brought me Caramel Choco Delights – which I might add can only be purchased from Harrod's fine food section – it was immediately prior to informing me that we would be having a top to toe health and safety audit which would keep us mired in paperwork for days, if you recall. And the time before that was when Zaf crashed the brand new Audi into a delegation of Japanese press reporting on their Prime Ministers visit to the Foreign Minister. A particularly bad day for the service that one," he replied, his blood pressure rising as he recalled the incident.

"Well - you'll be pleased to hear that there are no health and safety audits on the horizon and all staff cars are present and accounted for," Ruth began, hoping to soften him up for her announcement.

"And?" Harry prompted, his brows furrowed in anticipation that bad news would surely follow good.

"And we'll soon have an extra set of hands," Ruth finished brightly, then bit her lip as she waited for his reaction.

"We will?" he repeated, "and who might that be?"

"Your old friend Malcolm."

Surprisingly, Harry didn't lose his temper he merely considered the news and then replied levelly, "I don't recall management decisions on human resource issues being included in your job description."

Ruth twisted her hands together sheepishly, "they're not. But we're two officers down Harry. You know we need extra help and Malcolm is more than willing to lend a hand for a few days while we need it."

"Fine," Harry said shortly, "but don't make a habit of it unless you're prepared to shell out a fortune for Caramel Choco Delights,' he finished as he picked up one of the biscuits and bit into it, savouring its caramel centre.

Ruth shut the door quietly, a triumphant smile on her face.

She had known that Harry never could resist those biscuits.


	10. Chapter 10

Lucas returned to work three days later. He said nothing about his leave or the reasons for it, which Jo supposed was not unexpected with him. She didn't think she could ever recall him saying anything about his personal life or family in all the time he had worked with the team.

In the days that followed his return, neither of them had spoken about that kiss. And Jo had made a decision, but it was something she'd kept to herself. A secret. Harry and Ros knew, of course, they had to but she hadn't told anyone else yet.

On the fourth day after Lucas' return he arrived late on the grid. And much to Jo's surprise he wasn't alone.

"I wasn't aware that today was 'Bring Your Niece to Work Day', " Ros said coolly, as she surveyed Lucas and the dark haired little girl he had in tow.

"She's here because the lady that was supposed to look after her is sick today so I have to make do by bringing her to work alright," Lucas replied, sounding irritated.

Ros pursed her lips, "I need you at Hyde Park this morning to check out a target. You can't take her with you - children always manage to attract attention to themselves and that's the last thing we need."

Lucas ran his hand through his hair, "Can't Jo go?" he replied, after a moment.

"She can not," Ros replied brusquely. "I need her here and besides which the gentleman you will be observing has a bit of an eye for the ladies and Jo would seem an unwise choice for an undercover operative, whereas you, on the other hand are much less likely to be noticed unless you were intending to put on a wig and go to town in a short skirt and tight top."

Jo spluttered on her coffee and hastily put down her cup as Malcolm looked up from his desk and chipped in, "I'd pay money to see that," then put his head down again.

Lucas ignored the comment as Ros replied dryly, "wouldn't we all."

"Yessss," Jo replied softly to herself, nodding her head in agreement as she imagined what that might look like.

Lucas raised his eyes and glared at her, and she reluctantly wiped the smile off her face.

Jo continued to watch the scene transfixed.

Never in a million years had she imagined she might witness a conversation where Lucas would play the frazzled single mother and Ros the uncompromising chauvinistic boss. It was ...so unexpectedly entertaining and impossible to guess who would win. Lucas looked downright cranky and Ros as if she wasn't going to give an inch.

Jo shook herself mentally and stepped forward, "She could sit with me while Lucas is out. I'm sure she'd be no trouble."

Lucas looked at her for a moment, then nodded, "thanks Jo, that would be good."

"No problem," she replied promptly, smiling from him to Ros, who shrugged and replied, "fine, but we can't have a repeat of this. Lucas, you'll have to make alternative arrangements for Alice if this happens again."

During their morning together Jo and Alice struck up quite a friendship. She found that Alice was shy at first and would only speak when spoken to and would then reply quietly in a neat, clipped little voice. But her initial shyness soon wore off when she became more interested in the work Jo was doing, and edged closer to her computer to look at the graphics as they zoomed on to her computer. Jo pointed to the screen and explained that they could see what people were doing right now in different parts of the country on the screen.

Jo considered where she would have liked to visit had she been four. "Would you like to see what's happening at the zoo now?," she asked.

Alice nodded, and stood up on tippy toes to get a better view, clearly interested in what she might see.

Jo bent over and picked her up and sat her on her knee. "Oooh, look," she exclaimed excitedly, hugging the little girl, "a badger, and there's something else in the corner – do you know what that is?" she questioned, pointing to the far corner of the screen.

Alice nodded sagely, "efalent."

Jo hid her smile and nodded approvingly, 'yes, elephant. Shall we have a look at another camera then and see what other animals they have?"

By the time they had gone through all the cameras at the zoo Alice was chattering away happily about how she had seen a foxy in the park when she had gone walking with Uncle Lucas the other day but it had been brown not like the red one at the zoo. It was then that Ros came back from her meeting in Harry's office and looked at Jo's screen pointedly and commented coolly, "making progress on those identity matches I see."

"Quite," Jo replied hastily as she gently picked up Alice and put her down on the floor, telling her to play with the toys Lucas had brought in with him, and then returned her attention to her screen.

An hour later Lucas returned and came over to check up on Alice.

"So Alice is your niece?" Jo started casually, curious to find out more. She'd already asked Alice how long she'd been living with Lucas and had been told only a few days. To be honest she had always been a bit of a gossip and was intrigued to find out why the little girl was staying with Lucas.

"Yes," he nodded shortly.

"She's very sweet," Jo started, "very nicely spoken with good manners," she finished, then looked at him expectantly, clearly waiting to be told more.

He reluctantly complied, given that she'd just spent three hours watching her for him. "She's my sisters child, but she'll be staying with me now since she passed away last week."

"Your sister?" Jo repeated, her expression softening, "Oh Lucas - I didn't realise that was the reason you were on leave. That's terrible, I'm so sorry. Was it – was it sudden?" she asked hesitantly.

He nodded and pulled his hand through his hair, "suicide," he said softly, so that Alice wouldn't hear. "Nobody was expecting it. I didn't even know she was depressed and neither did my mother – unfortunately I don't get to see her often in this job. Her friends knew but they didn't realise how bad things were. If we'd known we might have been able to help," he added his brow furrowed.

She didn't know what to say to that one, but after a few seconds responded, "You can't blame yourself Lucas. If someone is determined to do that it's difficult to stop them."

She patted him arm gently, and then removed it after a second, feeling suddenly awkward. They fell silent for a moment.

Lucas sighed, "so Alice is my responsibility now. My mothers in a nursing home and can't care for her and nobody knows where her deadbeat father is."

"Oh," Jo replied, "well – if you ever need a babysitter I'd be happy to help out. I think we're friends already," she added, looking to Alice.

Alice nodded in agreement. "Like Jo," she replied, and moved closer to lean against her knee.

"I see," Lucas replied, smiling to himself. "Well far be it for me to break up this budding friendship, but Alice I think we'd better go and get you something to eat. Do you want to come too Jo?" he asked, his eyes lingering on hers.

Jo looked up at him. The way he held her gaze was quite disconcerting, "Oh, no," she blushed. "I'm in trouble with Ros for touring the zoo on CCTV cameras and now I have to be on my best behaviour all day."

Lucas shrugged, "I always like to live dangerously as far as Ros is concerned. But your call. We'll bring you back something instead," he announced as he took Alice's hand and turned to leave the room.

Jo was left looking after them, about to protest that they needn't bother, but they were already out the door. She put her head down and looked at the paperwork in front of her, thinking to herself that this morning had turned out to be very strange indeed.


	11. Chapter 11

The following week had been exceptionally busy as the team ran through a number of additional procedures that had been introduced for security threats and familiarised themselves with new GIS software which had some features that would improve their ability to locate targets but was far from straightforward to use. Lucas spent most of the week undercover on a mission that five was working on jointly with MI6 to curtail the terrorist activities of the Russian Mafia in London. Fortunately his role only involved a day job at a Russian owned business so he was able to return home at night to care for Alice.

When he returned to work only Ros and Malcolm were about but he was surprised to see a new face on the grid. Ros introduced them with her usual brusqueness. "This is Alex Satyev. He's Jo's replacement."

Lucas turned to her startled, "Jo's leaving?"

Ros nodded impassively, "Tomorrow's her last day."

Lucas was silent for a second and then extended his hand to Alex, a tall, fair haired young man in his early 30s. "I'm Lucas North."

He didn't stay around to exchange pleasantries with Alex, and instead moved quickly back to his computer, deep in thought. Though he was pleased that Jo's departure wasn't happening the way of so many others in their section, the news had thrown him. He pondered what she was leaving the service to do exactly.

It wasn't until after morning tea when she had returned from sorting out paperwork with HR that he got a chance to speak to her about it, oddly enough in the hallway when they almost collided. She was carrying a file and had made the mistake of multi tasking at an inopportune moment as she had her eyes glued to the latest intel report she had picked up from Section B while rounding a corner in the corridor, while Lucas, coming from the opposite direction had collected a hot cup of coffee and a jelly donut from the cafeteria.

For a second their eyes met and Jo realised that, though her grasp of physics was hardly exceptional it was pretty clear that they were on a collision course which would most likely end badly for her second favourite blouse and Lucas' coffee, not to mention his jelly donut. Fortunately Lucas had quick instincts and succeeded in swiftly side stepping to the right, though the surprise of the sudden encounter caused the file to slip from her hands as she put her arm out to protect her shirt from coming into contact with his coffee.

"Sorry bout that," Lucas said, swooping down to help her collect her files. "No, don't be," Jo replied hastily, scrabbling to pick up the confidential papers, "it was me, I wasn't paying attention."

"I hear you're leaving us," Lucas started, keeping his voice casually neutral.

"Oh, yes. Ros told you then?"

"Yes, she mentioned it."

"My replacement is here already," Jo replied. "Alex. You've met him?"

Lucas nodded, "briefly. The name sounds Russian."

"Mmm," Jo replied in agreement, straightening up as Lucas did the same, "He's half Russian. He was on the list for Tariq's job. We interviewed him and he was a strong candidate, his computer skills were good but Tariq's were better. He's been in the SAS and worked for the Foreign Office and speaks fluent Russian and Urdu as he spent some time in the Middle East on military service. When we interviewed him we thought he was more suited for a field officer role which we weren't looking for then but are now. Anyway I've been training him up over the past week and then of course tomorrow Tariq will come back too, though he'll be on crutches seeing as he's still in a cast..."

To tell the truth she was just babbling now, but she didn't know what else to say because of the way Lucas was _looking_ at her. It was so odd. She had had to glance down at her file every so often because otherwise he would have just kept looking at her the whole time without breaking eye contact and it was so disconcerting. Maybe it was something he had learnt in Russia and was trying out on her now. Or perhaps he was annoyed at the thought of having to train yet another replacement officer and was trying some kind of technique out on her to try to get her to change her mind.

He interrupted, "why are you leaving?"

No one had actually asked her that question yet. Ros had taken the news silently without comment, and both Ruth and Malcolm had bewailed her departure but neither of them had seemed particularly surprised. And Harry hadn't spoken to her directly about it at all except to place a rather delightful reference on her desk yesterday morning which was signed by Harry Peters, Research Manager, of the Immigration Investigations branch of the Home Office which she had apparently been employed in for the last four years, unbeknownst to her.

She decided to keep things light, "for a change," she replied casually.

"No really Jo," Lucas replied, cutting through her reply with a sudden intensity, "why?"

He didn't want her to lie to him, he wanted the truth. His sister had been able to deceive everyone and hide her true feelings.

Everyone had a breaking point. He had reached his in prison and in the case of his sister it had taken only the discovery of her boyfriend in bed with her friend, mounting credit card debts and their mothers declining health to push her to the edge. He had often wondered with Jo how far away that point was – surely it couldn't be far? Over the past year it had been one trauma after another for her. Zaf. Boscard. Adam. Ben. Connie. And now Sinclair and Tariq. It was hard to know where one began and the other ended. He wondered if she had reached that point now and once she had left who would look after her when Ros and Ruth couldn't keep an eye on her.

He watched her intently. She swallowed. She couldn't lie to Lucas. He was too good at his job, even if she said something other than the truth he would be able to read her with so little effort it was frightening.

She shut her eyes for a second. "I don't want – I don't want this anymore."

"What don't you want?" he questioned, not satisfied with her reply. He had to know more. Enough to be able to decide if Jo was like his sister. If he had understood better about his sister them he might have been able to intervene, to stop it.

She looked at him briefly, then down at her hands, shaking her head. How did he succeed at always making her feel so at a disadvantage?

"Jo." It wasn't so much a prompt as a command. "Tell me," he insisted, his hands now on her arms. If she didn't tell him she had the feeling he would never let her go and she would stay here imprisoned forever until he was satisfied with her response. She knew from experience that if Lucas wanted something he would make sure he got it.

"I don't want this job to be all I ever am. I don't want to wake up one day and find I've grown old and I haven't even really noticed because all that I've done is work. To have no life, no family - nothing but my job and then lose that. I don't want to get to know any more field officers, any replacement Adam's or Zafs, or Ben's and then watch them be destroyed or destroy themselves through this job. I don't want to have to hurt people anymore. I hate that. It's supposed to get easier every time it happens but that's nothing but a lie. I don't want to have to have to set aside my feelings and sleep with men I don't know and pretend like it doesn't matter to me. And I - I just want to be me for a change. Joanna Portman – if I can find her again."

She looked up and glanced at him briefly, then looked down. Her reply felt like she was unravelling her soul to him. All the lies and the pretence and the hurts she had hidden over the past four years had finally come out in a flood and it left her feeling curiously vulnerable, like she'd been exposed as a fraud.

Lucas watched her cautiously. Her reply didn't reassure him. She was too close to his sister for his liking. Far too close. He wouldn't let her go the same way. Of that he was sure.


	12. Chapter 12

On Jo's final day she was pleasantly surprised to find that Ruth and Malcolm had organised a surprise afternoon tea for her. Harry gave her a little hug and made a very sweet speech about how he seen Jo go from a fresh faced university graduate with a girlish crush on Adam Carter into an extremely valuable officer.

Jo's blush deepened even further when Ruth got up to add that Jo had proved invaluable on her return because she seemed to know the names of all the staff at Thames House, and remember almost everything about them including their pet likes and dislikes and their birthdays, and that she was proud to call her a friend because she was one of the sweetest girls she had ever met.

After Jo had thanked them for their kind words, and spoke about the things she had learned in the service and how much her colleagues meant to her, Ruth and Malcolm had hugged her and told her they would miss her. Ros hadn't hugged her but had handed her an envelope which contained a further reference how she had been so very useful as her assistant during her time in the Home Office and wished her well.

Harry had then kissed her cheek and handed her an envelope and a beautiful framed artwork showing a seaside scene in a striking Mediterranean blue which Jo immediately loved. She stole a sly glance at Ruth after it had been presented and wondered whether she had had a hand in deciding on the gift, knowing of Jo's love of art.

Finally Alex had moved over to hug Jo for what was, in Lucas' opinion, considerably longer than was necessary. Lucas watched them, irritated by this little scene. He hardly even knew Jo and he was acting like he owned her. Lucas cleared his throat meaningfully, "Jo."

Alex let her go and Lucas stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, placing one hand on her waist and one hand on the side of her body by her rib. It was quite overwhelming. She had known he was tall, but it was only now that he was so close that she really noticed the way her head reached only to his chin and how his shoulders were so much broader than her narrow ones. His eyes caught hers and after watching her for a few seconds he kissed her, his lips brushing the pink softness of her cheeks and lingering there for a few moments. The stubble from his jawline pressed against her skin and she could smell the spicy masculinity of his aftershave. "Good luck," he said finally, releasing her rather suddenly.

No one seemed to find anything odd in the little scene between her and Lucas, except Ruth who she saw was watching them both strangely. "Back to work it is them," Harry announced in a businesslike voice and everyone filed back to their desks.

Jo had almost finished clearing her things out when she looked up to see Lucas standing in front of her desk.

She blinked and wondered how it was that someone with as much presence as Lucas could be so stealthy. "Hello," she greeted him cautiously, not sure what he intended to say to her.

He nodded his head in reply. "I don't believe you've told us what you're doing next," he began, watching her curiously.

She found this interest in her activities surprising, given that no one else had bothered to ask that question.

"I've always wanted to write. I was thinking about writing a novel. A spy novel," she blurted out.

When it came out she instantly regretted telling him something that was a secret she'd hugged to herself for a few months and hadn't dared to tell anyone in case they laughed at her or ridiculed her aspirations.

Lucas considered her confession thoughtfully. "I think you'd be quite good at it. You're very observant and you're reports are always well written. Only make sure it's not too close to what happens here else Harry will lose his rag."

Lucas was generally a man of few words and his judgement was usually accurate. And he was not the type to throw around compliments without meaning what he said. For some reason she was secretly delighted that he thought she could do it.

"Well of course I wouldn't put anything in it that had actually happened," she responded quickly. And then she sighed as reality kicked in, "But I don't think I can write, because I have to pay my rent and that requires a real job. 9 to 5. And if I can't pay my rent I lose my flat and then I'm homeless," she added glumly.

"So don't pay your rent," Lucas replied, shrugging.

"But then I'm homeless," Jo repeated once again, wondering why he seemed to be having trouble making that connection.

"There are other options to be considered if writing is what you really want to do," he stated smoothly. "Is it?"

"Yes," she replied passionately. She really wanted to write, but it just didn't seem a practical possibilty at all.

"Well if you want to write you could always come and stay at my place. I have a spare room," his voice was casual, but his eyes were watching her intently.

Jo looked at him startled, "oh, but won't you need the space for Alice?"

He shook his head, "for some reason she took a liking to the little study so I've turned that into her room. I think it was because of the colour. She likes yellow. But I still have a spare room and my new place is much bigger than my old flat."

"Thanks Lucas. But I don't think I could intrude on you like that," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully.

"You wouldn't be intruding at all," Lucas replied firmly. "You would be welcome. Why don't you come round tonight – just to see what it's like?" he pressed.

Jo looked at him for a moment, "ok then," she replied. The idea of her living with Lucas who had such an odd, unsettling effect on her seemed unwise and she had no intention of staying with him. But it seemed impolite to refuse to even visit the place.

"Good, you know the address?" he asked.

"On the system," she replied, nodding briefly.

Lucas' flat was quite spacious, and tastefully decorated. It was certainly far nicer than her flat or anything that she could afford. She remembered Malcolm mentioning shortly after Lucas had arrived back in England that HR were arranging for his back pay from the last eight years to be paid into his account and figured that must explain how he could afford the place.

Even though she was tempted she had said no to his offer because she and Lucas had never really been close and the truth was that despite the fact they had worked together for almost six months now, she felt like she hardly knew him at all.

In the end though, the decision was made for her when she arrived home from drinks with some friends two days later to find that the neighbour's washing machine had flooded the flat above and the water had managed to seep through the ceiling of her bedroom and living room and drips were now sprouting all over the place.

She took one look at it the damage and sighed. Once the drips stopped she anticipated there'd be a nasty damp smell for several days, probably followed by some rather unpleasant varieties of mould spreading across her roof. Hardly ideal conditions for the next John Le Carre.

To make matters worse she'd found that the water had been switched off so she couldn't even have a shower. She had tried calling two of her friends, one of whom she found was out of the country and the other who answered the phone with a giggling whisper, "Not now Jo, Max has finally made a move."

Tired of rejection she had finally called Lucas, who thankfully was home. He'd cut her short, half way through her rather long winded, apologetic explanation and cut to the chase, "so you need somewhere to stay where you're not in danger of becoming as wet as a Barbara Cartland heroine who's just taken the waters at Bath."

"Yes, sort of," Jo replied, sounding confused, "I mean no to the Barbara Cartland bit but yes to the wet part," she clarified, hoping that he would take pity on her. It was after ten now and she didn't fancy sleeping in a wet bed tonight. That would be truly unpleasant.

Fortunately Lucas' gentlemanly instinct kicked in as she had hoped it would.

"I think you should come round and stay here," he replied in a tone that suggested she shouldn't argue, then added, "I'll even cook you dinner and open a bottle of wine."

"Oh Lucas, thank you," she breathed. Normally she didn't really care for old fashioned gallantry but right now she was very pleased to find that Lucas would be her knight in shining armour.


	13. Chapter 13

_Crete: 20 May 1941_

_Marianna stood at the top of the cliff and looked down to the bay below. The wind tugged at her hair so that it streamed out behind her and from this vantage point the people in the bay below seemed like tiny dolls going about their curiously insignificant little lives. Beneath her she could see the bay curving for miles in the distance – the golden sands of the shoreline contrasting with the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean and the startling fuchsia of the island's flowers. Although it wasn't yet noon the heat was intense and she put her arm up to shield her face from the sun. _

_Crete was the most beautiful place she could ever have imagined but it wasn't home. _

_For the past few months she had been stationed here as a nurse, along with thousands of British and Allied soldiers who had been evacuated from the Greek mainland following the Italian invasion. _

_On the island the soldiers had so far had little to do but occupy themselves by making mischief, however her days had been busy. Aside from the battlefield casualties that needed attention, there were the usual bouts of sickness and disease to attend to. _

_But today was different. Today she was free to do whatever she pleased and it was all the more precious for being her first day off for two weeks. _

_And what she wanted to do was to catch up on the latest novel one of the other nurses had leant her and then perhaps later - when the heat became unbearable - to have a swim in the sparkling waters of the bay. _

_She had settled herself on the ground lying on her stomach under the shade of an Olive tree and read two chapters of her novel before her eyes began to droop and she drifted off to sleep, her thoughts filled with pleasant dreams of Clark Gable from Gone with the Wind sweeping her off her feet. _

_When she awoke she saw that the sun had changed position and was now directly overhead. She stretched her hands in the air, and watched with sleepy contentment as the warm wind shimmered through the grass around her, creating ripples much like a pebble in a lake. _

_After a minute she tensed and pulled herself upright, hugging her knees. _

_She could hear a distant hum, a droning sound which became louder with every second. The noise was familiar and her heart began to beat uncomfortably, banging at her chest. She turned to face the coast and felt suddenly lightheaded when her eyes focused on the horizon. _

_Planes. Masses of them in formation. An ominous swarm. _

_Marianna felt nauseous with fear, but somehow managed to make it to a clump of trees nearby to take shelter. _

_From there she scanned the landscape rapidly. Nothing but grass and trees for miles and several hundred metres down the rocky cliff the bay which was, if anything, possibly a more dangerous location._

_Within a matter of minutes the planes were close enough for her to see them clearly. She peered at their markings, her stomach in knots. Not British. Not Canadian. The symbols on their tails were black, white and red. Swastikas. _

_Soon the noise became unbearable and the planes were directly overhead the island. Marianna watched with horror as one by one the planes opened their holds until all she could see were Germans. Hundreds of them, falling from the sky, their parachutes swaying gently in the breeze. _

_Her worst fears had eventuated. The invasion had begun. _

Jo paused and chewed on her pen indecisively. What would Marianna have done next she wondered. Would she have tried to get back to the village below or stayed put? Would she have tried to use her status as a nurse to protect herself during the invasion, even though she wasn't in uniform?

She sighed, and decided she needed to fix herself a cup of coffee to help her to think. This writing business was not straight forward.

...

"How's the novel coming along?" Lucas asked casually when he had returned from work that day.

"Four pages so far," Jo announced, feeling pleased with herself.

"Are you going to tell me what its about?" he enquired curiously, thinking it would be interesting to find out what went on inside Jo's head.

She shook her head vigorously. "No – it's a secret Lucas. It's not for you or Ros, or Ruth or Harry to read."

He observed her expression with some amusement. Clearly she was taking this novel business very seriously, and her secrecy did make him wonder what exactly she might be writing about.

"Where's Alice?" he asked.

"I checked on her about ten minutes ago and she was in her room playing."

Jo had offered to pay rent for her room, an offer which Lucas had steadfastly refused. Alice had started at a childcare centre two days ago, as Lucas felt she needed to interact with other children, and they had agreed that she would drop Alice there in the morning and collect her at night, given that Lucas' hours could be erratic. Jo was pleased to be able to help out in this way if she couldn't contribute financially.

Lucas headed down the corridor towards Alice's room and opened the door.

The sight that greeted him made his heart contract painfully. Alice was sitting on the floor, a teddy bear in her arms, crying quietly but uncontrollably, her pretty face screwed up pitifully.

She looked up at him, "I - miss – Mummy," she hiccupped in between sobs.

Lucas looked back at her and wondered what on earth he was supposed to do here. He was considering moving over to pick her up, when her heard a little noise behind him and turned to see that Jo standing behind him in the doorway.

Alice looked so small and forlorn that Jo couldn't help but want to comfort her.

So she did the only thing she could think of to do, which was to move over to Alice and pick her up and hold her, stroking her hair gently and speaking softly about what they might do at the weekend when they went to the seaside like she'd promised they would do until the sobbing quietened and then Alice asked in a quiet voice whether Lucas would come with them too.

Lucas, who had been watching the two of them silently, replied immediately that of course he would come. And what's more he would buy them all icecream.

Jo suggested at that point that they go into the living room where Alice could tell them about her day. She put Alice down on the floor and extended her hand which the little girl grasped and then they moved to the lounge where Alice was quite happy to sit on her knee and tell her about what she had done during craft time. Jo was surprised to hear that the object she had brought home with her and proudly placed on the kitchen table was in fact a mug, despite the fact that it had no handle and had a distinctly unmuglike shape. Lucas caught Jo's eye and grinned before nodding sagely and replying that he had immediately recognised that was what it was and that he was looking forward to using it.

Alice now seemed to have settled down quite happily but he was amused to see that when Jo went to get up to make a cup of tea, Alice couldn't be persuaded to let go of her and had stayed sitting on her knee with her arms wrapped around Jo's neck, and Lucas had had to fix her a drink instead.

He reflected that at work, Ros had always made Jo's softness seem like a disadvantage, a handicap to doing her job, and Lucas had somehow been schooled into taking the same view. But here at home when he saw her with Alice he could see that Ros had been wrong to view things like that. He couldn't imagine Ros being able to respond to Alice in a way that seemed so comforting and so natural.

When Alice had arrived he had quickly learned that parenting was harder than it looked. But perhaps with Jo's help he might be able to make a go of it.


	14. Chapter 14

_The bombardment of the island had started now and Marianna could feel the panic rising in her throat. It was the same feeling that occasionally came over her in an operating theatre when things started to go wrong, only in this case, it was worse. _

"_One step at a time, Nurse Porter," she remembered the elderly doctor saying to her when she was present at her first operation, "start with your breathing then take it one step at a time and you'll make it through." _

_So she ignored the chaos around her and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other to scramble down the rocky cliff and reach the village below where her objective lay. Once the reached the bottom of the cliff she was surprised and heartened to see that though there were no Allied troops nearby, the Greek villagers had no intention of giving up their island without a fight. Many of the men had emerged from their houses carrying whatever weapons they could find and were engaged in combat with the Germans. She even saw two elderly women dressed in black spoiling for a fight. _

_But she couldn't stay to see who would win. Her shoes clattered on the narrow cobbled lanes as she wound her way along the maze of ancient streets. She had to get to the hospital. The hospital was safety, protection. Surely the Germans wouldn't dare attack it, given that it had a large red cross painted on its roof? And what was more, she had a duty to protect the patients inside the hospital, even if was her day off. _

_She breathed a sigh of relief as she reached the imposing stone doors of the hospital. She was safe. But she was still afraid. Afraid of what the Germans might do to the soldiers and afraid of what the consequences of the islanders resistance might be. _

Jo looked up from her writing to see Lucas in the doorway, shopping bags in hand, thoroughly drenched from the pouring rain outside.

She sprang up, "let me help you with those," she responded, still thinking to herself how strange it was seeing Lucas doing such mundance tasks as bringing the shopping home. He always gave off a James Bondish air of sophistication which seemed rather at odds with the Tesco bags he was now carrying.

"What were you thinking about?" Lucas demanded suddenly, observing the smile on her face.

"Nothing," Jo replied hurriedly, and decided it would be diplomatic to change the subject.

"How's Alex coming along?" she enquired politely.

Lucas shrugged, "so so."

"Oh," Jo replied, sounding disappointed. "Isn't he working out? I thought he was good and I did spend quite a bit of time training him before I left."

Lucas made a non committal sound. He honestly couldn't find anything actually wrong with Alex to complain about. His chief complaint was that he wasn't Jo. That and his little public display of affection when Jo had left still managed to irritate him when he saw Alex.

"He speaks fluent Russian you know and Urdu. And he has lots of contacts in the Foreign Office," Jo added, hoping that Lucas might be brought around to seeing the merit of her recruitment choices.

"Don't we all,' Lucas replied, sounding unimpressed.

"You don't like him do you Lucas?" Jo asked, watching him curiously.

Lucas shrugged. There were a million things that annoyed him about Alex but none of them seemed bad enough for him to single out. "He's ok. Not my type though."

"Nobody's proposing that you marry him Lucas," Jo replied, rolling her eyes. "If you made an effort you two might find it easier to work together. I'd have thought that given you both have a common interest in Russia and he's very knowledgeable on a lot of subjects you would get along pretty well. Perhaps we should invite him over for dinner and then you could get to know each other better."

"No," said Lucas, surprising himself with the force of the reply.

"Oh," said Jo, concerned that she had annoyed him, "well of course if you don't want to we won't, it's your house after all."

"That's settled them," Lucas replied decisively. "But now I think about it there was one other matter I had to mention to you."

"Mmm?" Jo replied absently, as she searched through the shopping bags to see what was inside.

"That was that we're having a visitor stay tonight. Alice's aunt."

"Her aunt?" Jo repeated, turning around to face him, the surprise evident in her voice. "I didn't know – do you have another sister Lucas? I thought you said there were only two of you?"

"There are. But I tried to track down Alice's father and got nowhere but did manage to contact her sister in Newcastle and she was coming down to London this week anyway so I suggested she come and stay tonight and see Alice."

"Oh," Jo replied, looking thoughtful as she removed a packet of chocolate biscuits from the plastic shopping bag so that she could perform a 'quality control' taste test on them, "yes it does sound like a good idea for Alice to get to know her aunt. When is she arriving?"

"Soon I should think," Lucas responded, "she had some work event to attend in the city but said she'd be round after that."

Jo looked at him and wondered if the concept of preparation for this unexpected houseguest had ever entered his head. It seemed unlikely. She put down her biscuit reluctantly and announced that they had better start cooking dinner if that was the case.

.....

As it turned out it was fortunate that they did for Louise Granger turned up promptly on their doorstep half an hour later. Louise was a rather plump specimen of a woman in her early 40s with peroxide blonde hair who took one look at Lucas then smiled like a cat that got the cream and greeted him with a rather alarming degree of familiarity but kissing him on the cheek not once but twice, and then holding him to her in a somewhat uncomfortable embrace.

Jo watched with some amusement as Lucas managed to extract himself tactfully from her grip, and then held her hand out towards Louise when Lucas introduced them. To her surprise she found that once she had noticed that she existed Louise's greeting was noticeable cooler towards her, in fact it was almost verging on frosty as she surveyed the young blonde disapprovingly. "Your wife?" she questioned, frowning as she turning to Lucas.

Jo interrupted, "no – just a friend," she replied, shaking her head.

"I see," Louise replied, ignoring Jo and turning her attentions to Lucas. "Now, Lucas do take me to see my little niece. I'm dying to get to know her better, and of course her dashing uncle too."


	15. Chapter 15

Louise proved to be a somewhat interesting houseguest. During dinner she completely ignored Jo's polite attempts at conversation with her, and focused her attention solely on Lucas. She had a certain intensity about her that was unusual and Jo got the impression that once she wanted something, nothing would stand in the way of her getting it.

Lucas seemed oddly oblivious to Louise's attention and carried on making conversation with them both.

From Jo's perspective the situation was an uncomfortable one and she was pleased when Lucas finished his meal and she was able to get up from the table, collect the plates and move into the kitchen. Lucas joined her after a moment. "Do you think we should have dessert?" he pondered, looking through the cupboards.

"I think Louise wants you for dessert," Jo whispered pointedly. "Don't tell me you hadn't noticed?"

Lucas smiled and shrugged, and replied, "Of course I noticed," then moved towards the bench. "Do you want coffee or tea?," he asked Jo.

Jo fidgeted with her bangles indecisively, the jangling creating a tiny metallic tinkling "You know I think I'll call it a night," she said finally, "I'm tired."

Lucas merely nodded and replied, "alright. See you tomorrow then."

Jo nodded, "yes."

...........

Jo managed to write a whole chapter the next day. Part of the reason was that she decided to keep to her room most of the time as she didn't care for Louise's rudeness, and was looking forward to her departure tomorrow. She was relieved when Louise left the house after lunch to take Alice out shopping.

Having spent several hours already on her novel, by now she was completely wrapt up in the plotline and even the two minutes it took her to move to the living room made her impatient. Once there she settled herself on the couch, and picked up her pen so she could resume Marianna's story -

_It was as Marianna returned from the hospital, her lips curling with delight as the sun warmed the bare skin of her legs and forearms and the gentle sea breeze played with her hair, that he caught her. _

_His approach was silent and she immediately started to struggle when his arms closed around her. She could feel the scream rising in her throat as he clamped his hand over her lips. _

_He was handsome and tall, in his late 30s with blonde hair and blue eyes. A German Officer. _

"_Stop struggling," he said brusquely. "It's rather pointless anyway considering I'm on your side." _

_She stared at him and her body stilled. _

"_Now I will remove my hand from your mouth as long as you promise not to scream or fall into a fit of hysterics. Do you promise that?" he questioned her casually._

_Marianna nodded silently. Once he'd removed his hand she stepped back from him and placed her hands on her hips. "You're English," she stated accusingly. _

"_So it would seem," he replied in a perfect Cambridge accent, smiling and nodding in agreement, but offering no apology for his behaviour. _

"_Well I don't know what part of England you came from but where I'm from that is no way for a gentleman to gain the attention of a lady," Marianna replied, glaring at him. _

"_Quite true," he replied cheerfully, "but then again we're not in England and these are hardly normal circumstances." _

_Again he smiled, and she could hardly help noticing how very handsome he was. _

"_Who are you really? And why are you wearing a German uniform when you're English," she questioned, curious to find out more about him. _

"_Alan Coulter is my real name and I'm here on his Majesty's service," he replied coolly. _

"_You're a spy, you mean?" she asked, suddenly still. Spying had a definite air of excitement to it, but also danger._

_He shrugged, "something like that." _

"_What do you want with me then?," she questioned urgently. _

"_There is on your ward at the hospital a certain high ranking German officer, Major – General Heinreich Schotter. We believe he is carrying some information of value on his person - highly confidential information which could greatly assist the British war effort if we knew what it was. We want you to get hold of it," he stated. _

"_But – I'm not a spy," she protested, trying to process this information, "how would I get hold of the information?." _

_Alan sighed, clearly slightly exasperated at the thought of having to take her through it step by step. "It's simple – you go through his pockets, through his clothes and his bedside cabinet when he is asleep, or better still when one of the other nurses is bathing him. Once you've got the information you copy it as fast as you can and then return it. Sister Marks often does this sort of thing for us but she can't get access to that ward. I believe her preferred method is to dose the patients with laudanum before this sort of operation." _

"_Sister Marks is in on this too. But she's so severe," Marianna gasped. _

"_Efficient would be a better word," he replied, his eyes crinkling in amusement. _

"_She is severe," Marianna countered, "she managed to reduce three of the junior nurses to tears in one day," _

"_Well, severe or not, she must have a good opinion of you seeing as she recommended you for this job," he replied, watching her thoughtfully. _

"_I wouldn't think so, she's never complimented me on my work," Marianna responded promptly. Rosalind Marks had never said anything positive to her about the way she did her job and in fact she couldn't recall her ever saying anything complementary to any of the nurses. Marianna had however managed to avoid bursting into tears during a lashing from Sister Marks waspish tongue or fainting during an operation like some of the other nurses had done. Perhaps that was the reason she had been selected. _

"_Before you give me your answer I want to make sure you understand the risks. This line of business is dangerous and the German's show no mercy to spies," Alan stated, his voice suddenly serious. _

_Marianna swallowed and __closed her eyes for a minute as the vision of a dozen men from the village being lined up against a wall while a German officer pointed his rifle at them and shot them though the head one by one as the rest of the town was forced to watch came back to her with startling clarity. The price of resistance was high and the Germans' revenge would be swift and brutal. _

_She could recall the hatred on the islanders faces as they had watched that scene. She opened her eyes after a minute, and nodded, "I'll do it." _

Her writing was interrupted by the return of Louise with Alice. Jo observed that Alice was now dressed as a miniature version of Louise. However the dark colours and tacky fabrics Louise had dressed her in did not suit the little girl, and were far too mature for a four year old. When Alice came closer to her and put her arms around Jo's neck she was surprised to find that her ears lobes were a bright pink colour and she had newly pierced holes complete with silver studs. She could see that it had clearly been a painful exercise, for there were tear tracks on Alice's face, though she seemed to have recovered from the shock now, but did seem to be unusually clingy around Jo.

"You pierced her ears," Jo started hesitantly as Alice pressed her face against her cheek. Alice was really far too young for that, and surely she should have at least have asked Lucas' permission first.

Louise nodded, shrugging, "She cried a bit at first of course, children do that. But they look marvellous and every woman should have pierced ears," she stated firmly.

"But Alice isn't a woman she's only four," Jo replied, thinking to herself that now they would have to watch her so carefully to make sure her ears didn't become infected, "Lucas might not be pleased about this," she added, biting her lip.

"I'm sure I can talk him round," Louise replied with a lazy grin.

Jo watched her uncertainly. Perhaps she could. It was hard to tell what exactly was going on between the two of them. At first she had thought that Lucas didn't care for Louise, but now she was beginning to think he might be coming round. And she was such a dominant presence in the household now she had arrived that maybe the force of her personality had led him to somehow fall under her spell.

....

In any event, she didn't get to hear Lucas' opinion on the pierced ears because she decided to retire to her room and stayed there undisturbed until that evening, emerging only to sit down for dinner. Once again, the meal was uncomfortable. Louise continued to focus her attention on Lucas and pay as little attention to Jo as she could possibly get away with. It seemed that Louise and Alice were the only ones talking, for Jo was quiet and Lucas tense and uncommunicative, though not impolite.

After dinner, Jo returned to her room and continued to write. A little after ten she moved to the bathroom and had a shower. As she returned to her room a movement in the living room caught her eye. She could see Louise pressed to Lucas' chest, her lips almost on his neck as she whispered and giggled things into his ear. She couldn't see Lucas' expression but she didn't want to. She shut her door and leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly sick.

Up until now she had felt at ease living here with Lucas but now she felt like an intruder, and unwanted guest who had overstayed her welcome. She couldn't stay here any longer, she would have to start looking for somewhere else to live.

....

It was nearly eleven when Jo emerged from her room to pour herself a cup of coffee and encountered Lucas in the kitchen doing the same. "Everything ok Jo?," he asked, watching her intently.

"Fine," she replied quickly. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"I thought you seemed a bit quiet at dinner," he replied, "And I remembered what day it is today too," he added softly.

Her mouth opened as if to reply but her voice caught in her throat. Of course Lucas would remember. It was almost exactly a year since he had returned from Russia, and one year to the day since Adam Carter had died.

"I was thinking of going and seeing Wes tomorrow," Jo murmured, not meeting his gaze. "Adam always said that if anything happened to him he could rely on –", she stopped abruptly and swallowed, "Zaf and I to check up on how Wes was doing."

Lucas had long since noticed that Jo had a very expressive face, and he found her far easier to read her than the rest of Section D as a result of this. A lot of it was due to her eyes, and even though she looked at him for only a few seconds, the pain was clearly visible.

"Jo –", Lucas started, his thoughts returning to his sister, "have you ever thought of talking to someone about your time at the service and everything that went on? To put those things to rest so that you could move on."

She watched him, her voice suddenly defensive, "I have moved on," she replied, "every day of my life since then has been about moving on."

"Yes, I realise that you've kept going ever since then, but I don't know if you've resolved your feelings about Adam and Zaf or Ben. Or everything else that went on in the service."

She hated the way Lucas was able to see right through whatever walls she had put up to protect herself and cut straight through them. It left her feeling completely exposed and her only response was to protect herself - to put up barriers between them and separate herself from him as she was doing now

She took a step back from him, and said coolly, "I didn't know that you were practicing to become the service's psychiatrist in your spare time in addition to brushing up on your field work."

"It's part of my job to read people Jo, and I'm good at it," he replied, his tone irritatingly measured, and his eyes fixed on her face. He continued, "I think that everything that's happened over the past year or two has been difficult for you and that you could use this time to work through some of those issues. Perhaps you could talk to someone professionally," he added.

"I see," Jo replied, her voice taking on a sharp edge, "And you're at liberty to give me advice because of course you've completely resolved all of the issues you have from your time in Russia."

Lucas refused to be distracted from their conversation and dismissed her comment with a bland if untruthful, "I have."

"You have not," Jo replied, irritated by attitude. "I don't believe you have resolved what happened during the past eight years. I don't believe that you've resolved being tortured while your boss managed to pull strings to get his way on pretty much everything except getting you released from prison and then you returned home to find your wife married to another man. And, what's more I would have thought that you might have considered it none of my business if I told you that I thought you should see a physiatrist because you're still affected by those things and I would have to agree with you."

He ignored her comments and took a step closer to her, "But we're not talking about me here. We're talking about you and the fact that you're clearly still affected by what happened to you during your time in the service. The deaths of your colleagues, civilian casualties, Boscard and Sinclair too."

"I'm not mentally unstable if that's what you're trying to say Lucas," she replied sharply.

"I wasn't saying that," he replied, his voice slow and deliberate. " I just thought that perhaps now might be a good time for you to work through some issues from your time in the service, so that you could work out some of your feelings."

"And I wish that you would mind your own business," Jo snapped. It was like he had decided to take a stick and poke around inside her, prodding at her sore spots to see if he could get a reaction.

She thought that somewhere inside of himself Lucas secretly wanted her to fall apart, so that he would seem like the strong one, perhaps even the one to fix her. So that he could tell himself that he was fine, that he was nothing like her. She wondered bitterly why she had ever had faith in this man who was so untrustworthy, so dark, so _Russian_.

"But I won't," he replied, his eyes challenging hers. "I've learnt from experience that it's better not to mind my own business. And the facts are that you're half way to having a complete breakdown and have been for a long time and it's not something I can ignore anymore."

She crossed her arms defensively, and she could hear the breath hitch in her throat and the words start to tumble out of her, "so tell me how I am supposed to feel Lucas, seeing as you have all the answers, just tell me what I'm supposed to feel and I'll know what to pretend and then we can pack up and move on and everything will be all sweetness and light," Lucas could hear the way her voice had started to become wildly uneven and see the two pink spots forming on her cheeks, "what would be correct emotional response to Adam, and Zaf and Ben's deaths and to seeing innocent people blown up and having to sleep with someone you don't care for, don't even know and to – to.."

Here she paused and stopped because even now she hated the sound of that word. Rape. It was as if people stopped at the thing that had been done to her and couldn't see past that to see her behind. It seemed like she would forever be defined by the worst moment of her life.

She could see Lucas watching her, waiting for her to crack. He had been trained to read people and he was so adept at it he could almost tell a person's life story just by observing them for a few minutes. And now he was trying to get under her skin, inside her mind and find out what was going on inside her. He was dangerous man and she had to protect herself from him. She couldn't let him unravel her, she had to hold herself together.

"You want to pick me apart like some science experiment and diagnose my problems and then tell me that my feelings are all wrong," she started accusingly, " You think that you can put me back together and somehow all the pieces will magically fit because you understand me so much better than I could understand myself. You're too used to playing with people, to manipulating them to get your way. I'm not a thing to be physoanalysed, not something for you to try out your latest interrogation method on, I'm a person same as you."

She felt like screaming those words but she managed to stop herself from doing so. But both of them were so intent on the other that they failed to notice arrival of Louise who stood in the doorway observing them both with an acidic expression.

Lucas refuted her comments sharply in a rapid fire response, "Don't be stupid Jo, I don't want to destroy you or try to control you. I don't know how you feel about Adam, or Zaf or Ben. You were closer to them all than me. Adam I barely knew, Ben you had a relationship with and Zaf I know you were close to though I never met. I don't know what emotions you should feel about the fact that Boscard raped you, and it would be foolish of me to try to tell you how you should feel about that. And I could say that I understood how you felt about sleeping with Sinclair even know you didn't know him because I had to do the same with a visiting diplomat's wife when first joined but the truth was I enjoyed it and I would be lying if I said it was the same. I just – I was concerned about you because of my sister –"

"I'm nothing like your sister", she declared with such vehemence it left her whole body shaking. Lucas was unbelievably wrong to try to compare her to his mentally unstable suicidal sister.

She stood glaring at him in the silence that followed. It wasn't until some minutes later that it occurred to her that she had no idea whether or not she was like his sister because she'd never actually met her.

"Jo," Lucas started, moving towards her.

"Go away. Leave me alone," to her horror she had started to cry now and she could hear her voice rising hysterically. She stepped backwards and whirled towards the door and then stopped, aghast.

The face that met hers watched her dispassionately and with a rather blatant dislike. She felt suddenly lightheaded and wondered how long Louise had been standing there and how much of the conversation she might have overheard. Her brain didn't seem to be working properly and even words that had been spoken only a few seconds ago now seemed curiously indistinct but she knew that their argument had been revealing. Indiscreet.

Louise managed a tiny smile, "Adam, Zaf, Ben, Boscard and Sinclair was it Jo? Possibly not the type of girl that's suitable for marrying Lucas, unless you prefer to drill in well ploughed soils," she added caustically

He could see Jo turn pale at her words and observed the sudden intake of breath as if someone had knocked all of the air out of her. He wondered for a moment if she might faint but instead she spun on her heel and flew out the door, her vision blurred by tears.

_Writing two stories at once is kind of interesting in a complicated kind of way. Keep reading to see how they intersect. _

_And if you are liking the story please review and let me know. Thanks._


	16. Chapter 16

_I somehow missed copying a little bit at the start of chapter 15 to the story when I uploaded it last time - its the bit where Lucas and Jo have a conversation about dessert. I have updated chap 15 to include this now so you might want to re- read the chapter with that bit added. And now for chapter 16..._

Lucas looked at Louise, his face dark with rage, "You would do well to remember that you are a guest in this household. As Alice's aunt I have tried to be civil to you and you can stay until tomorrow but only if you show some respect toward Jo. If I catch you speaking to her like that again you'll be out on your ear so fast you won't know what's hit you," he hissed. "Are we quite clear on that?"

Louise looked at him, startled and nodded. What annoyed her about that girl was that, whichever way you looked at it, Jo was beautiful, and she who was 43 and carrying a few more pounds than she ought to, wasn't. But she hadn't expected that Lucas would react so badly to her little jibe. He had always seemed polite and gentlemanly around her. She hadn't anticipated that there was this side to him.

Lucas turned away from her abruptly and strode from the room in search of Jo.

He tapped at her door, "Jo? Can I talk to you?"

"No."

"I'm sorry that I upset you."

She didn't reply to his remark.

"Come on Jo, come out please."

"I don't like Louise," she replied, tearfully.

Lucas nodded in silent agreement. He would have liked to say so but Louise was not far away and would probably hear him.

"Please come out here Jo."

"No," she replied, wiping away her tears. "I have to write now. I'm half way through a chapter and I have to finish it before I forget what I wanted to say."

That was true and it was also true that she really, really didn't want to see Lucas right now, and had even less desire to see Louise.

"Can't it wait?" Lucas asked impatiently.

"No," Jo replied. Even though he couldn't see her he recognised her tone and could imagine her face taking on a rather determined set like he had seen occasionally at work, her chin jutting out defiantly and her eyes challenging anyone to try to tell her what to do.

He sighed. "We'll talk later then," he compromised.

If she hadn't been so upset she might have smiled at her victory, but instead she picked up her notebook and resumed where she had left off.

"_Danke Schon Schwester," the German sat back in his bed and relaxed now that his dressing had been changed. _

_Marianna smiled briefly and nodded to him, indicating she understood his thanks. _

_Just then Sister Mein appeared, smiled at her and announced that she would now take over and Marianna was free to leave. _

_As a nurse she found that the Germans had a greater respect for her than for the native Greeks because she now tended to both German and British patients. After the Allied forces had seen that defeat was imminent and withdrawn to North Africa, most of the patients had been transported with them. But she and eight of the other British nurses and one doctor had stayed behind to care for those too sick to be moved. Soon after that the Germans had moved in their patients and German doctors and nurses filled the wards. The relationship between the English nurses and their German counterparts tended to be kept professional, both sides after all had entered the nursing to save lives, regardless of nationality. Two of the German nurses Marianna had found hostile, but others were more approachable and she'd even managed to strike up a tentative friendship with a couple of the sisters, including Sister Mein. _

_On her way home from the hospital Marianna reflected that she supposed she was now a fully fledged spy. It had been ten months since Alan had approached her and in those months he had trained her to be able to perform an increasing variety of tasks. _

_After she had successfully copied the notes from the German officer in her ward, Alan had begun sending her on little jobs – collecting packages from the markets or dropping off coded notes at all manner of obscure places – whitewashed orthodox churches, country farmhouses or left under the bricks of ancient ruins. Though she hadn't asked, she knew what it was about. The resistance. Her work was helping the Greek resistance. And she knew what the price of resistance was, for the Germans had rounded up entire families, even she had heard, a whole village on the other side of the island, where they detected even a whiff of resistance. If they were lucky they might meet their end with a bullet through the head, if not, well she didn't care to imagine what might happen to them, but she knew there were things worse than death that the Germans could do to you. _

_After three months Alan had begun to teach her radio code. Wireless transmission was the most dangerous activity of all, because some of the German vehicles were equipped with radio antenna and if they were close enough to detect a signal they would hunt down the source. _

_She had taken some time to perfect it, but Alan had told her she was a fast learner and she had wanted to believe he was telling the truth. She knew Alan transmitted messages every couple of weeks. But she had only sent a message once. He had said it was because if she was discovered there was very little chance of escape, but if it was him, with his officers uniform and his perfectly Germanic looks and accent, he might manage to escape suspicion. But she knew it was also because he wanted to shield her from the more dangerous aspects of the job. Over the past months they had developed an increasingly strong friendship and her initial crush on him had abated once he told her about his wife and ten year old son back home in England. _

_When she returned home she found a note pinned to the door from Kate, one of the other British nurses to say that they were down in the bay swimming and that she should come and join them. _

_When she got inside she kicked off her sandals and collapsed into the chair wearily, unpinning her veil as she did so, glad to be rid of any extra layers in the heat of the late afternoon. _

_She heard a tiny noise, a shuffling inside the room and her hands dropped to her sides, her hairpins falling to the floor as she did so. She turned her face towards the door and froze. _

_There was a soldier in her house. He had clearly been lurking behind the table when she came in and he had moved stealthily towards the door. She watched, terrified as his hands moved to turn the key to lock it and then stand in front of the door to block any escape. _

_She took in his uniform and his bearing. He was tall, exceptionally so and dark haired with piercing blue eyes. She couldn't place his uniform. It wasn't German or Austrian or Italian – she knew their colours. Something more obscure._

_He looked foreign and dangerous. She thought this wasn't going to end well. _

_Her eyes began searching the room for something to defend herself with when he announced suddenly, __"Hampstead Heath." _

_Marianna stared at him, startled. It was a code word she and Alan had used to indicate that they needed to talk. _

_"Marianna Porter," he stated. _

_She watched him warily. He seemed to know who she was. She wasn't sure denial was the right course of action but she wasn't about to acknowledge he was correct either. __"Who are you?"_

_"My name is Marcus Smythe, but you will know me as Alexander Jakob. I will be your new contact." _

_He spoke with a perfect English accent, with a slight northern flavour. _

_"I don't know what you mean," she responded cautiously. _

_He stepped closer to her and she watched him, still intimidated by his height and the sense of complete control he gave off. He seemed like the kind of man who knew precisely how to get whatever he wanted and that could very easily spell trouble_

"_You do," he replied brusquely. "You just don't know whether you can trust me." _

_He removed a picture from his pocket and held it out to her. It was clearly her in the photograph but she wasn't shown in her nursing uniform. Instead it was a posed shot of her in her best dress by a studio photographer which had been taken just before she had left England some eighteen months ago. She remembered it well for it had been the day of her twenty first birthday and she had even gone to the trouble of copying Veronica Lake's hairstyle for her party that evening. It wasn't on her file at the hospital, only her family had a copy of it. _

"_I am who I say I am. Otherwise how would I get this?," he stated with certainty. _

_He continued, "and how did I know to greet you with the words Hampstead Heath. Or that if you were to say that you heard that it has been unseasonably warm in Gilbrator recently I would then reply that I much prefer the weather in Italy this time of year."_

_"What uniform is that?" she questioned. _

"_Hungarian," he replied shortly. _

_"But you're English?" she stated. _

_He nodded. "Born in Cumbria, but I've been active in the secret service for over ten years now." _

_He had spent eight of those years in Russia but he wasn't about to share that kind of information with a nurse barely out of the schoolroom who as far as he could see was play acting at being a spy. _

"_Where's Alan?," she asked cautiously, suddenly worried that she hadn't seen him for over a week now which was unusual. _

"_Gone," Marcus replied, his face giving nothing away. _

"_Dead you mean?" she questioned, feeling suddenly nauseous. _

_He didn't reply directly to her question, and instead said, "His cover is still in tact. The operation hasn't been compromised." _

_He was dead then, though the man standing in front of her clearly didn't care. _

"_What do you want me to do?," she asked, her voice unsteady as she fought to restrain her tears from falling. Alan always visited her with instructions and if he would only tell her what he wanted from her then perhaps this man would leave. _

_He cocked an eyebrow at her, then placed his hands in his pockets, "nothing for the mean time. Just call this a getting to know you visit. But in future I expect there will be things I need you to do from time to time. I think you will find that if you f__ollow my instructions everything will go according to plan. If, however, you don't trust me then you will be placing yourself and everyone else in grave danger." _

_She watched him, her manner reserved. Trusting this man wasn't something that came naturally to her. _

_Alan, with his wit and charm, had seemed to make what she was doing somehow seem like a game, but now everything seemed deadly serious. _


	17. Chapter 17

The next day Jo was dismayed to wake and find a thick blanket of fog had fallen across the city. Her fears were confirmed when she checked the flight information online only to find that flights in and out of the city had been cancelled. They were stuck with Louise for the time being. After what had been a quiet breakfast in which Louise, although far from friendly, had at least managed to be civil to her, she announced that she would be going out to visit some old friends.

Within an hour Jo was back at an old haunt and met up with Ruth for a cup of coffee. Ruth did her best to subtlety extract any information she could about how things were going at Lucas' place and Jo equally as subtlely asked a few leading questions in the hope of trying to find out whether any progress had been made on the Ruth and Harry situation. It appeared not, although Ruth reported that Harry had put on a pound or two as a result of the Home Office's announcement that budget cuts necessitated that he reduce expenditure by 5% and he had comforted himself with some caramel choco delights as he pondered where on earth to find the savings.

At the end of her tea break Ruth suggested that Jo could up to the grid to say a quick hello to the rest of the team and sign Tariq's cast. Jo didn't need much persuasion to accept that offer and found she was curious to hear any gossip about what had happened in her absence. While Lucas would tell her things, she found that he had no interest in all of the most interesting aspects of what went on inside Thames House which centred around the personal lives of those inside the building.

She spent ten minutes nattering away to Tariq and Malcolm, who had stayed on a little longer than expected in light of her departure. Ros and Lucas were no where to be seen. After that she caught up with Alex who seemed to be making good progress in his new role. As she was about to leave the grid, Alex came forward and rather unexpectedly drew her aside in the corridor.

"Jo," he began, "I was thinking that perhaps you might like to come out to dinner with me sometime," he asked smiling.

The question caught her off guard. "Umm," she prevaricated, not sure how to reply.

Alex was handsome and it wasn't that she didn't like him, it was just that up until now she had really only seen him as her replacement and hadn't considered whether she might fancy him or not.

"I suppose that it's not really the done thing while you work together to see people on the grid socially but I thought that maybe now you didn't work here anymore it might be ok. What are you doing tonight?"

She pondered that question. In all likelihood it was looking like she might be sitting at home with Louise, and with her luck Lucas would probably work late. Not that she particularly wanted to see him at the moment either. That settled her mind.

"I'm free. If you'd like to take me out somewhere I'd be pleased to accept," she replied smiling politely, then added, "just as a getting to know you sort of dinner." She didn't want him to get the impression she was making a lifelong commitment by accepting.

"Great, shall I pick you up at 7 then, you're staying at Lucas' now aren't you?"

She grimaced, then nodded, "just until I find somewhere permanent that isn't in danger of becoming like something from a scene in Titanic."

She turned to depart from the grid with a smile, relieved that perhaps this evening wouldn't be so awful after all and decided that, penniless writer that she was, she could still afford another coffee which would enable her to sit in the comfort of a warm coffee shop as she continued the latest chapter of her novel.

_..._

_Marianna didn't hear from Marcus for almost six weeks until one day she found a note slipped inside her spare pair of shoes at the hospital. She surreptitiously placed it in her pocket and read it in the toilet. _

"_7pm. St Katherines. M."_

_It took her a couple of seconds to work out that the M in the note stood for Marcus, and then she tore the note into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. _

_..._

_St Katherine's Monastery stood on a hillside overlooking the Venetian port of Chania. The city lay some three miles from the hospital where she was based and after tending to patients all day she found herself cursing Marcus for not being able to find somewhere a little closer to home for this rendezvous. _

_She found him, as expected inside the ruins of the Monastery, examining the city below through a gap in the bricks. He glanced up at her briefly, then returned his attention to the view. "Did you know that Chania has been inhabited for over four thousand years – first by the Minoans, then by the Byzantine Empire and after that by the Venetians when an Italian noble sold the city to them for 100 silver marks 700 years ago?" _

_Marianna shook her head, her eyes taking in the whitewashed walls of the houses and earthy red of the rooftops inside the city walls contrasting with the shimmering azure of the Mediterranean. She loved the island but was woefully ignorant about its history. _

_He continued, "and then in the Seventeenth century the Turks laid siege to the city and plundered its riches and turned all the churches into mosques for the next two hundred years until the Greeks took it back last century." _

_He turned to look at her once more thoughtfully. _

"_What did you want to see me for?" she questioned abruptly, wondering why he was looking at her so intently._

"_I have a job for you." _

_She nodded. That much was obvious, else he wouldn't have asked to see her. _

"_So far I've been working with the men of the Resistance to make progress for the cause, but this operation is a little different. The type of job that requires a woman." _

"_I see," she replied, waiting to hear what he would say next. _

"_Kommandant Eric Hohler is a slippery piece of work. We've been trying to obtain some documents in his possession for a couple of weeks now but he seems rather attached to them and we haven't been able to copy them. Sister Marks suggested that you might be more successful than we have been at obtaining them." _

"_Me?" she repeated. _

"_We did consider using one of the local girls but it seems the Kommandant is a good Nazi and he favours the blonde haired, blue eyed variety of woman." _

_She watched him warily. "I'm not sleeping with him if that's what you're suggesting," she replied sharply. _

_Sister Marks probably would do that if the need arose, but the way Marianna had been raised had led to her thinking of sex as being something people did only in the context of love and marriage. She supposed her comment made her sound naive._

_Marcus seemed to be of the same view, "Well this is Greece not Rome and even there I'm not sure it's the done thing to offer up vestal virgins as a sacrifice anymore," he replied, his lips twitching briefly. _

_She glared at him. "You needn't be so vulgar," she replied promptly in her primmest nurses voice. _

_He ignored her reply. "Anyway we shall need you to keep the Kommandant entertained tomorrow evening at his private apartments. He visits the officers club in the city and I will escort you there this evening and then conveniently lose you. You will make it your business to befriend the Kommandant and I'm sure with the necessary encouragement he will invite you back to his rooms. And while he is whispering sweet nothings into your ears I will be searching his apartment in search of the documentation, with some assistance from Tomas, my Greek friend. I will brief you in more detail tomorrow evening when I collect you at eight."_

_She watched him silently. It was clearly an order and she was expected to obey. She hadn't completed this type of operation before but she hoped she would be able to get through it without incident._

_She nodded, "I will be ready at eight." _

...

_Marianna emerged from the Kommandants apartments at eleven the following evening and steadied herself as she walked towards the church on the corner where they had agreed to meet afterwards. Marcus and Tomas had obtained the papers, copied them and returned them but it had taken longer than they had expected and the drunken Kommandant had become more demanding than she had anticipated. _

_In her world, it was expected that girls of her age and class would remain virgins until they married. Marianna had been until tonight, but she wasn't now. _

_The memory of the encounter with the Kommandant had left her feeling dirty and disgusted with herself. There must have been some way to avoid that situation she thought to herself as her footsteps fell on the cobblestones, breaking the stillness of the night. If she had been smarter, or had the ability to think faster on her feet perhaps she might have found it. She could still feel his hands on her body, sliding down her side, grabbing at her breasts as he pinned her down and silenced her attempt to talk her way out of the situation with his mouth. She had to restrain herself from recoiling in disgust. He had reeked of whiskey as he pushed her down roughly and when he put his mouth on hers she felt like she was suffocating. _

_She entered the church silently and laid her hand against the stone column as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, trying to make out the shapes inside the building. Almost immediately Marcus appeared in front of her, his figure uncomfortably closer to her. _

_She could see now and his nearness was disturbing. He was watching her closely, his eyes on her face and she couldn't bear to look him in the eye. He must have known what had happened in that room, he must have heard it. She wished she could undo what had been done, she wished things had been different. She imagined what it might have been like if she could erase the memory of what had happened and replace it with something different – with the memory of something softer and more intimate with someone different. For a second she considered what it might have been like if it had been this man standing in front of her now instead of that German. Though he too seemed foreign to her she didn't think he would be unkind and if it had been him then perhaps things wouldn't be so awful, her body wouldn't still ache from the careless way the Kommandant had used it and she wouldn't feel like she did now. _

_She wanted to turn and run from the building, instead of having to listen to whatever it was he had to say about an operation which had gone so badly wrong from her perspective. _

_But what was done was done and it was hopeless to try to rewrite what had happened and she would have to stay and await his instructions. _

_She stepped backwards from him as he began to speak, his voice cool and dispassionate. "I don't need to hear what happened in that room but I do need to know if you think he suspected anything." _

"_No," Marianna replied, turning her face away from him so that it was shadowed from the streetlight which shone through the windows. _

_She glanced at him briefly, her face still shadowed. His face was a mask and there was a certain curtness in his tone as he spoke. She wondered what that was. Distaste perhaps for what she'd become? Contempt for her lack of prowess as a spy which had gotten her into this position in the first place? _

"_Right. You may go then but be sure to go back via the shoreline and not on the main road. I will contact you when I need you next." _

_He nodded to her briefly as though in dismissal and walked away from her. She moved to rest her forehead against the pillar, waiting until his footsteps had faded into the distance and then sank to her knees in despair. _


	18. Chapter 18

That afternoon Jo finished another chapter of her novel and she was pleased to find that Louise had ventured out. Where she went she didn't care so long as it was somewhere she was not. After she had gone to collect Alice from childcare, they returned home and Alice and Jo entertained themselves playing with the puppy that sometimes ventured over to their flat from next door which Alice had become firm friends with. The mist still lingered across the city so Jo insisted that Alice wrap up warm while outside.

Lucas returned after six, and after changing, wandered outside in search of them both only to find Alice sitting on the ground, with the puppy jumping around excitedly in her arms as she tried to hold him still. Jo was bending over them both trying to keep order as best she could but it was clearly far from straightforward.

Lucas grinned at them and bent forward to stroke the puppy. "Do you think perhaps we should get one of these?" he asked Alice casually.

"Yes," she replied excitedly. "I want one just like him."

Lucas straightened up and replied that they would have to go and look at a pet shop that weekend, then looked at Jo, who returned him a dazzling smile and replied that she was sure Alice would take good care of a puppy.

Lucas watched her, recalling his conversation with Ailce yesterday while they were reading Cinderella. Alice had pointed to the illustration of Cinderella in her ballgown and declared that she looked like Jo. And she had done almost exactly.

He wondered how it was that Jo always managed to look so impossibly beautiful, even in the most mundane circumstances, like now when the mist had shaped her hair into little curls that fell around her face, and leant her skin a dewy softness. Her lips had turned a rosy pink while her eyelashes seemed impossibly long and framed luminous blue eyes that sparkled as if they had been formed from cut glass. And even worse than that was her Barbie doll figure which combined slenderness with rather exaggerated curves. He had caught himself thinking about that that morning when he had met her in the hallway as she had emerged from her bedroom wearing only a singlet top and shortie pyjamas.

Jo looked down at her watch and realised it was nearly 6.30 and that she had better get ready and announced that she would have a shower.

She returned some twenty minutes later wearing a little dark green woollen dress, a coat and black tights. While she looked for her house keys which she seemed to have rather negligently misplaced Lucas looked her up and down, noting that she was both cute as a button and possessed of very nice legs.

Jo noted with some disappointment that Louise had returned home and had seated herself in the lounge with a glass of wine and was observing her and Lucas in the kitchen sourly.

"You going out with friends?" he asked after a moment, thinking that she was probably planning on meeting up with one of the girls who had called her up over the past couple of days.

"Mmm," Jo replied, "something like that," as she picked up a cushion in search of her keys.

Lucas was the first to respond to the knock at the door a moment later and pulled open the door to see Alex standing in the doorway smiling back at him.

He looked at him for a moment as if considering the situation and then said slowly, "you're here for Jo then?"

He nodded. "I hope I'm not too early. I can wait out here until she's ready," he added politely.

Alex was good looking, tallish, well groomed and was clearly here to collect Jo for a date. He found himself unexpectedly opposed to that idea. Strongly opposed.

Lucas nodded a greeting to him, but didn't bother to reply or attempt to make further conversation while Alex stood on the doorstep waiting.

Jo had finally managed to locate her keys in the fruit bowl where Alice had hidden them and stepped forward to greet Alex with a friendly, "Hi".

There was an awkward pause in the conversation until Alex asked if she was ready to go a moment later and she smiled at him and nodded. He added that he had booked them a table at a little place in Bayswater and took her hand and they departed the house. Lucas watched them go frowning as Louise put down her glass to remove her cardigan in order to reveal a little more flesh.

Lucas found that fifteen minutes in Louise's presence was all he could stand. The woman was not good company. She didn't keep up with politics or the arts and celebrity gossip was one of her favourite topics of conversation. That and her rather blatant attempts to attract his interest by flirting with him. He didn't mind the flirting so much but he did object when she tried to invade his personal space by sitting close to him, her knee pressed against his while she chattered away with her hand resting against his arm.

After a while he got up and politely excused himself saying he had to put Alice to bed. As he turned to leave her room after he'd read her a story he almost tripped over a pair of Jo's high heels which had somehow found their way into Alice's room. He had a sudden vision of Alice tottering around the house in heels that were much too big for her as he'd seen her do only a couple of days earlier. Shaking his head to himself he picked up the shoes to return them to Jo's room, where they would hopefully stay out of harms way. When he switched on the light he found a blue object caught his eye, peeping out from under the corners of the pillow. He could see that it was a notebook and he had a fairly good idea what it would contain.

His spy instinct, combined with a certain curiosity kicked in and he edged over to the bed and picked it up, then returned to his room and began to read.

Jo's novel proved to be quite engaging and it was easy to recognise the characters she introduced. It was blindingly obvious from the beginning that Marianna Porter was clearly none other than Joanna Portman and Adam was clearly in disguise as Alan Coulter and the rather severe Rosalind Marks also had a certain familiarity about her. He pondered the fact that, had she not been a spy, the role of a charge nurse would have suited her very well and she would probably have excelled at making the junior nurses dissolve into tears. He had just reached the part when Marianna encountered a new contact by the name of Marcus Smythe when he looked at his watch and noted with some surprise that it was now almost eleven.

From his room he had a good view of the street and Jo had not returned from the evening. He wondered, with some annoyance, what exactly she was doing with Alex and why she wasn't home yet. Lucas put down the notebook and drummed his fingers against his desk indecisively for a moment, then got to his feet. Protocol be damned. He wanted to know what Jo was up to, and more particularly whether she was at Alex's house. He recalled Alex mentioning that he lived in Putney and they were supposed to be in Bayswater for dinner. He collected his laptop from the corner of his room and then dialled Jo's number though the remote access system.

"Hello," she answered.

"Hi Lucas here," he responded.

"Oh hi," she replied, waiting for him to explain why he was calling.

"I was calling to say that I left some money out for you in the hallway to cover the ballet leotard you brought for Alice the other day."

"Oh, thanks Lucas," she replied. "But I don't mind paying for some little things seeing as you're letting me stay there."

Jo had also searched the listings for places to let that day in the paper but had found only three possibilities in her limited price range, two of which had already been snapped up when she called and one of which turned out to be not quite as advertised when she spoke to the owner and found that it was really only a room with shared bathroom facilities with the next door neighbour. It seemed likely she could be staying at Lucas' for a little while longer yet.

Lucas looked at his computer. Nine seconds. He needed to keep her talking for another six to get a fix on her location.

"Unusual weather at the moment," Lucas started casually.

"Oh," Jo replied after a second, "yes the fog is persistent."

"Mmm," Lucas replied in agreement, then suddenly his voice changed and he announced brisquely, "well I'd better be going."

He looked at the location. Putney. Damn Alex with his technical wizardry, his time in the SAS and Foreign Office contacts. She was in Putney with him.

Jo put down the phone, her face a picture of confusion. She had never known Lucas to make small talk over the phone before.

She shook her head and returned her attention to her coffee, listening distractedly as Alex commented that he liked this little coffee shop both because it was both right around the corner from his house and it made great coffee. Jo smiled absently and agreed that the coffee was excellent and the atmosphere lively.

Back in his room, Lucas was still keeping track of the time disapprovingly as he picked up the notebook to resume Jo's novel.


	19. Chapter 19

Lucas kept reading until he reached a passage which he made him pause and read with increasingly close attention. The scene where Marianna, like Jo had played the honeytrap. A game which they'd both emerged from badly burnt.

Some of the phrases echoed in his mind after his eyes had left those lines: _She could still feel his hands on her body, sliding down her side, grabbing at her breasts as he pinned her down and silenced her attempt to talk her way out of the situation with his mouth. She had to restrain herself from recoiling in disgust. He had reeked of whiskey as he pushed her down roughly and when he put his mouth on hers she felt like she was suffocating. _He read and then reread that line with distaste recalling so vividly the scene on the boat that he could almost smell the stench of whiskey on Jo when she'd left Sinclair's room. Later that evening he remembered that after he had kissed her he'd hated the fact that her aftertaste had been that of another man.

_She wished she could undo what had been done, she wished things had been different. For a second she imagined what it might have been like if she could erase the memory of what had happened and replace it with something different – with the memory of something softer and more intimate with someone different. For a second she considered what it might have been like if it had been this man standing in front of her now instead of that German. Though he too seemed foreign to her she didn't think he would be unkind and if it had been him then perhaps things wouldn't be so awful, her body wouldn't still ache from the careless way the Kommandant had used it and she wouldn't feel like she did now. _

When he got to that passage he stopped and stared at the lines in front of him on the page. Had her thoughts really mirrored his in the corridor that evening? Had she considered what it might had felt like if he had been with her instead of Sinclair, even if only for a moment. And if she had thought of him then why was she now with Alex _and what was she doing with him? _Trying to rewrite things as they should have been with Sinclair with another man. He got up and threw her notebook down, enraged at the idea, then stormed out of the room.

After pacing round the kitchen for several minutes and observing that it was now 11.37 and she still had not returned home, he eventually poured himself a drink and gulped it down, his back leaning against the bar, then strode back into his room. He collected her notebook and impatiently returned to her room and slid it back under her pillow, then reluctantly decided that there was no point staying up waiting for Jo and that he should go to bed.

...

Jo woke late the following morning, which was unsurprising considering she'd gotten in after midnight. She reflected that she liked Alex. He was good company, intelligent, thoughtful and he treated her nicely. Until recently she might have said yes to his offer of another date, maybe even been content to settle down with him. But something had changed recently. Somewhere along the way something had happened that left her not content, not satisfied to make do with Mr Almost Right. She couldn't put her finger on what was wrong between her and Alex, she only knew that whatever was between them wasn't enough for her. Something was missing.

She looked at her alarm. 7.54. At eight she would have to get up to make sure that Alice made it to childcare on time, but until then she had a precious few minutes to herself to savour, tucked up in the cosy warmth of her bed. She considered once again what name she should submit her novel for publication under. It had to be something completely unlike her own name, a name that would result in no one ever suspecting that she was the author. She was rather fond of Chloe Van Damon or Bianca Saint Claire. It also had to be exciting in a way her own name was not and in her opinion those names fitted that bill.

When she left the house with Alice, she was relieved to find that the mist had finally cleared, but her relief quickly evaporated when she switched on the radio to hear that the airlines were reporting that it would take up to three days to clear the backlog the weather had created. She sighed, thinking that they were likely to be stuck with Louise for at least another night, possibly two. She wondered why she didn't just take the train back to Newcastle or the bus. Or why for heaven's sake Lucas didn't just book her a ticket so they could be rid of her? Alice clearly wasn't very fond of Louise, and when she had the choice much preferred to spend her time with her or Lucas.

And then she recalled the little scene she had witnessed a few days ago between Louise and Lucas late at night when they had been embracing each other in the living room. That was why Lucas hadn't gotten rid of Louise, because there was clearly something going on between the two of them romantically.

When she returned from dropping off Alice, Jo found that Louise was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast. Jo nodded to her briefly as a substitute for saying hello and then returned to her room to resume her story.

_By February 1943, Crete had been under German occupation for almost two years and with every day of foreign rule the hatred of the people for their foreign oppressors grew. The Greeks were a proud people and they continued to do their best to undermine the German's war effort. The resistance continued its work to disrupt supply lines by creating road blocks, setting alight trucks and ships, ambushing troops and sabotaging airplanes. The reprisals were fearsome. Marianna had heard that in the village where she lived, when the Greeks had succeeded in destroying the electronics of a Fokker so that it was unfit to fly, the Germans had then rounded up ten men from nearby houses and interrogated them for over a week, at the end of which six had been tortured to death. Only one of the ten had talked but from the information they had provided the Germans had managed to find the two culprits and had shot dead their entire families before their eyes before taking them into the town square to stage a public execution as a warning to the rest of the village. And Marcus' contacts in the resistance reported that such things were commonplace. _

_All of Greece suffered under the brutality of German military occupation. Everywhere resistance movements sprang up which the Germans put down with increasing ferocity. On the mainland food became in such short supply that the people went hungry and in some places even began to starve. In Crete they were relatively fortunate for the island was bountiful and the sea an ever present source of food. _

_At times Marianna found it had to reconcile the visciousness of the Germans actions towards the Greeks with the men she encountered on her rounds at the hospital. She found the German soldiers largely treated her with courtesy and respect, even deference. Others attempted to flirt with her shamelessly, as if, despite the language difference, she were one of them. But she never flirted back for she was patriotic enough to think that while she might nurse them, even befriend the lonely young boys who had been injured or disfigured by the war, to fall in love with a German would be a betrayal of her country and of the values she held dear. _

_Over the past few months since Marcus had appeared, Marianna had encountered him enough times to know that she could trust him with her life and that of others. She continued to find him unpredictable for he had a trick of appearing when she least expected him, but she knew he was no traitor, and in fact was fired by a burning hatred for the Germans and everything they stood for. Though his behaviour was puzzling at times. She thought in particular of the time when they had hidden in the caves with two British airmen who had crash landed on the island while they waited for a boat to collect them. The Germans had entered the very cave they were sheltered in, walking in a few metres and shone their flashlights into the interior. Marianna had almost stopped breathing when their lights had reached within half a metre of where she was pressed against the wall. When she opened her eyes again the Germans had been gone, their footsteps ringing in the distance. In the darkness Marcus had pulled her to him and kissed her. Hard. And then just as suddenly he had released her, murmuring to himself, _"_Still alive, you're still alive." And then after it had happened he had never referred to it again and it was as if it had never happened in the first place. _

_That evening Marcus left her a coded note asking her to meet him in the trees above the hospital. She arrived promptly at eight to find him prowling around irritably. _

_He didn't even bother to greet her. _

"_There is a list in German HQ," he announced. "463 names are on it. All of the known Jews in Crete." He stopped and turned to face her and said sharply, "The Germans are planning to round them up in a few days and ship them to Poland where they will be treated the same as the Jews there. Do you know what the Nazis do with the Jews?"_

_Marianna nodded, "It is very bad. They force them to stay in ghettos and they are made to wear stars so that the Germans can pick on them and then they take the families away from their homes to work in camps." _

_She almost jumped at the ferocity of his reply, "They do not," he snapped abruptly. "They kill them – shoot them, gas them in camps, murder them in the thousands each day. Right now they are emptying the cities in Germany, and Poland and everywhere else in occupied Europe of Jews and putting them on trains to death camps – men, women and children, the sick and the elderly too." _

"_That can't be true," Marianna gasped. "Surely no one – not even the Germans – would do something so evil. How it is possible? And if it were how could they keep so many deaths quiet?" _

"_It is true" he replied, running his hand over his face, before continuing, "I've seen the classified reports copied from the Germans setting out their plans. There is no doubt that it's happening, though the rest of the world knows nothing of it." _

"_What can we do?" Marianna asked, desperate for him to tell her that he had a solution. _

"_I can obtain the list for a couple of hours, and we will then copy it and return it. Once we have a copy we will liaise with the Resistance to warn the Jews. With a little luck some of our fellow Greeks from the neighbouring islands may be persuaded to put their fishing vessels into action and collect them from the island. They would be safer on Rhodes or Naxos where the Italians are in control and Jews are not being targeted for deportation. Perhaps from there they might even escape to Turkey or Syria where they would be free from persecution."_

Jo put down her pen. Her thoughts began to drift towards what Lucas might be doing now and she twirled her hair absently. She decided that it might be ok to have a little break from her novel and walk up to the shops to get some bread. Even novelists had to eat after all, and Lucas ate like a horse, and that, combined with their additional houseguest meant they had now finished their last loaf. And now that her unused holiday pay had finally come through she at least had a little cash.

That evening Jo had made plans with her friend Sophie to go out to the movies. She was enjoying her new found freedom now that she had left MI5, which had always made it difficult to go out socially when she was constantly at risk of being called in to work with very little notice.

She returned a little after nine to find Lucas still up reading the paper and Louise in the shower. He raised his eyes from _The Times_ and surveyed her coolly. "Pleasant evening?" he questioned.

Jo smiled and nodded, "very pleasant thank you."

"And your night out last night was also pleasant, judging from the time you returned home. If indeed you made it back at all," he added, scowling down at the paper.

Jo watched him, wondering whether he had just came across the article about the government's plans to raise the tax on petrol once again, and the levy on alcohol and 'luxury items' which had thoroughly annoyed her when she read it earlier that day.

"We got back a little later than I expected," Jo supplied helpfully as she turned her attention to making herself a hot drink.

"Well, I expect we'll all know how the evening went when it's added to the next chapter of your little novel," he replied shortly.

Jo turned around slowly, "what?" she questioned, staring at Lucas as her gaze narrowed. "Did you read my novel?, she asked accusingly.

Lucas shrugged, ignoring her question and kept his eyes on the paper.

A response that infuriated her. "You did! That is so devious and underhand and so...so..."

"Spylike? he supplied helpfully, looking irritatingly pleased with himself as he smirked. "Because you must know that devious and underhand is a big part of my job description. If you wanted it so stay secret you should have hidden it properly. Adam Carter should really have trained you better." He paused and pondered for a moment, "or should I be referring to him as Alan Coulter now...?"

"That was not for you to read. It was private." She glared at him.

"Actually," he began, "I have to say it's quite good. Certainly publishable, possibly even a bestseller."

She had been about to walk away but his praise stopped her in her tracks. "Did you think it was good. Really?"

He nodded, "The storyline was quite intriguing. Marianna seems a clever little thing and I liked Marcus. And interestingly enough I found myself agreeing with almost everything he had to say," he added pointedly.

He looked up and watched her for a moment, "there was one scene that I found particularly interesting. The one where Marianna and Marcus were in the church."

"I –," Jo started, then fell silent, blushing as she recalled how she had written that scene. Marianna had imagined how different it might be if Marcus had made love to her. And Lucas would probably have figured out in no time whatsoever that she was Marianna, and he was Marcus.

She couldn't have been more mortified. Through the story she had secretly disclosed her thoughts and now Lucas had read it. And what was worse he was clearly in the middle of something with Louise and wasn't even vaguely attracted to her. She had made a complete fool of herself.

Lucas was still watching her with the most odd expression on his face. Suddenly he spoke up, "what was interesting to me was that I think the same idea may have crossed Marcus's mind. That he might have considered what that might have been like if he had been the one to make love to her," he added in a deep voice.

He continued, looking thoughtful, as she squirmed with embarrassment, "now that would have made for an interesting scene. Perhaps you should put that in later on. And now I think of it I don't really consider Marcus would be the type to be satisfied with a chaste romance and I suspect that Marianna is actually rather beautiful, though the novel doesn't say anything about that. I imagine she's quite a sexy girl."

Jo watched him warily. Did he know that she was Marianna? And if he did why was he speaking to her like that when there was clearly something going on between him and Louise?

Was he teasing her, having a laugh at her expense like he had done with his jibe about Adam not training her properly? He must be. That was it.

She wouldn't rise to his bait and replied coolly, "It's an interesting suggestion and one worth considering, but I'm not sure it would fit well with the rest of the plot."

"Do give it your consideration," Lucas replied, his eyes resting on her face. "I believe it's generally held that every best seller needs a bit of spice and I imagine that scene would be very ... intense."

Jo nodded, feeling suddenly short of breath. She didn't return his gaze and instead turned away from him and left the room in search of the comfort of her bedroom.


	20. Chapter 20

Jo was pleased that she managed not to encounter Lucas the next morning, and even better still she found that Louise had gone out shopping again that day. After breakfast she continued her story.

_It was eleven by the time Marcus returned with the list of names. In the dark stillness of the basement cellar of his apartment they copied the names in silence. Marcus was making one list to be split amongst the resistance in the west of the island and her list would go to the groups in the east. _

_After an hour her hand began to throb, but the __names continued, pages and pages of names. Shopkeepers, farmers, teachers, mothers, nurses like herself, little children and the frail elderly and every one of them with their own story, every one of them with people who loved them, cared for them. She glanced up briefly to look at Marcus who was bent over the table, copying with intense concentration. _

_Marianna continued, placing her finger underneath each new line, writing until her wrist began to ache and the lines began to blur into one as her eyes grew weary with tiredness. __Her heart sank as she came across one group of names in particular:_

_Rachel Konstansus, 26, mother, 44 Georges Strasse, Peroposeus  
__Benjamin Konstansus, 6  
__Sophia Konstansus, 4  
__Miriam Konstansus, 1_

_She passed through Georges Street on her way to and from the hospital and knew which house number 44 was. The little boy and girl often used to play outside the house in the evenings. After she had seen them a couple of times she had started to wave to them as she passed by, and had on a couple of occasions stopped to talk with them, tentatively trying out her faltering Greek on them and finding them eager to chatter to her about their game, despite the language difficulties. The little girl was very beautiful with huge dark brown eyes and jet black hair, and the little boy had the endearing friendliness of an enthusiastic puppy, but was moved more slowly than the girl due to a limp. Their mother and baby sister sometimes sat out on the porch. At first the woman had ignored her, probably taking in her fair colouring and nurses' uniform and assuming that she was a German, but then when she had come home with another of the English nurses one night, talking as they went, she assumed she had recognised her accent for she had begun to smile at her warmly as she passed and wave to her. _

_Probably two thirds of list was made up of women and children. She still found it difficult to believe that what Marcus had said was correct – that if the Germans got hold of the people on the list they would murder all of them, even the little children. _

_She put her head down and concentrated on finishing the list. They had to save them. They had to. They couldn't let the Germans take these families who had done nothing wrong. _

Jo wondered what it would have felt like to have been Marianna, to be living in her world. A world that had some similarities to her time in the secret service but in other ways was very different. What must it had felt like to live as a spy in enemy territory where there was an ever present danger of being discovered.

Her thoughts returned to her conversation with Lucas last night. She supposed he was right that novels did need a bit of sex to help sell them, to make them more sensationalist and give them popular appeal. But would something have happened between Marcus and Marianna in real life, she wondered. And if something did happen in her novel how on earth would she manage to look Lucas in her eye after his teasing of her, given that he didn't respect her privacy and would probably find her novel wherever she decided to hide it.

She sighed crossly. All this would never have come about at all if it weren't for Lucas being such a complete busybody as to go into her room and search for her novel in the first place. It was so ungentlemanly and downright sneaky.

She would have to keep looking for someone else to stay and pray that something halfway decent would come up soon that she could at least begin to contemplate renting on her limited funds. Though she had to admit that she would miss Alice's company if she were to find somewhere of her own.

...

Jo arrived promptly at five to collect Alice from daycare. Normally she would find Alice loitering by the gate, waiting to tell her about her day. But that evening she was nowhere to be seen. Jo walked inside, looking around amongst the sea of little faces, searching for the blue ribbon she had tied in Alice's hair that morning. She had liked the shade, pleased by the way it matched her wide blue eyes so perfectly.

But there were no blue ribbons to be seen, and no little girls dressed in denim pinafores with red jumpers and navy blue tights as Alice had been that morning.

She approached one of childcare workers, her face showing signs of concern. "Is Alice around? I'm here to collect her," she enquired.

The woman looked at her blankly. "She left a little after 3 this afternoon. Her uncle came in early to collect her."

Jo frowned. Lucas had said nothing of that. Surely he would have mentioned that he had picked her up and she didn't need to bother?

She moved to the corner of the room and took her phone out of her pocket and selected speed dial six. "Lucas?" she began hurriedly. "Is Alice with you?"

"No. You know Ros won't let me have her in at work. She's at childcare – unless you've collected her of course." She could hear the bemusement in his voice.

Jo took in a breath, her voice suddenly nervous. "I think – I think we may have a situation. I'm at her childcare centre and she's gone. They say that her uncle collected her around two hours ago."


	21. Chapter 21

_Story continues below. A little warning though. This chapter is M rated. _

Lucas arrived at the centre some twenty minutes later to find that Jo had already taken a description of the man who had collected Alice and rung Malcolm to ask him to scan the CCTV footage in the area to identify number plates of vehicles travelling on the roads between 3.00 and 3.20pm. 94 vehicles were identified and after knocking on doors of neighbouring properties eventually they came to one elderly lady who recalled a dark haired girl getting in to a grey car with blonde man a little after 3 that day. Tariq narrowed the possible getaway vehicles down to 12 grey vehicles. When shown images of different makes and models flashed through from Tariq on Lucas' laptop, the woman wasn't certain of the exact type, but managed to exclude 8 of the 12 cars. Which meant they were now chasing four vehicles which could have been used to take Alice.

Jo was immediately suspicious of Louise. She was the only one who appeared to have any motive for taking the child and the timing seemed too coincidental for it to be mere chance for a stranger to have taken her, and a stranger who knew enough about Alice's situation to present themselves as her uncle. Lucas agreed that Louise should be considered as a suspect but seemed more reluctant view her as the prime suspect. It seemed to her that he was still protecting her, that he wanted to believe that she was innocent. There was clearly still something between them, perhaps he was even in love with her.

After they had questioned the neighbours and reviewed the CCTV footage, Jo returned home to see if Louise had returned from her excursion, and was unsurprised to find that she hadn't.

It was now 8pm and the hunt continued. Lucas was on the grid with Ruth who had stayed behind to help them out, a move which Harry had approved despite the fact that this was officially a Police matter. Alice's disappearance had been reported to the Police but the only action they had taken so far was to interview both him and Jo and take down some notes, interview the lady who had seen the child leave with the blonde man and say that they would put an alert out for Alice and review CCTV footage, which Section D had already done. If Alice was to be found, Jo was pretty sure that they would have to do it themselves.

They spent the next two hours reviewing CCTV cameras but it was more difficult to track vehicles at night and no leads developed. Jo decided to look into Louise's background but could find nothing untoward. They did however arrange for a contact in Newcastle to visit her address, but no one was at home. When eleven o'clock came, Lucas told Ruth to go home. The fog had set in once again which meant that it was now impossible to get decent footage of car numberplates and it seemed unlikely they would make further progress that night. Ruth had to be in at eight the next morning and it wasn't reasonable to expect her to work the night through on a case that didn't even officially belong to MI5.

At 11.19pm Lucas received a call on his mobile.

"Hello," he answered, expecting that it would be Ruth or Harry calling for an update on the situation.

"Hallo, Lucas North," a male voice replied. Lucas recognised the accent immediately. Russian.

"Who am I speaking with?" he responded quickly.

"You don't need to know my name. What you do need to know, Komrade, is that I am the man who has your niece."

Lucas's finger slipped down to his computer to select the 'track' button to try to get a fix on his location as the caller continued, ''And that if you would like to see her again you will need to prepare fifty thousand pounds for exchange. I will call with the details of where and when the handover will occur after 12. Do we understand each other Mr North?"

Lucas took in a breath, reminding himself he needed to keep his cool. "I will have the money ready for you," he improvised smoothly, "but you will receive it only on the condition that my niece is alive and well and unharmed. If you hurt her in any way there will be no money and what is more I will hunt you down and make sure that you suffer for your actions in ways you could not possibly imagine."

There was a silence at the end of the phone for a few seconds and then the man appeared to have recovered from Lucas' threat. "If you have the money your niece will be returned to you unharmed. If you don't have the money, well, as to what may happen to her, I cannot say."

The line went dead and Lucas looked at his computer screen and swore. 11 seconds. The call hadn't been long enough to identify where it had come from. They were no further along now than they had been three hours earlier. He made his way downstairs and out the front door of Thames House, heading for the nearest cash machine, thinking to himself that he was pleased that he was with a bank that didn't impose daily withdrawal limits.

His backpay for the last eight years had amounted to 357,000 pounds and after the purchase of his flat he had had roughly 130,000 pounds left in his bank account. If things went according to plan he would never actually have to hand over the funds in the first place, but if he did have to he was confident they could be recovered. All that really mattered now was to get Alice back safely.

Ten minutes later he returned to the Grid and headed for the meeting room where Jo had shifted to continue her work to try to trace Alice.

"Lucas," she sighed in exasperation, her eyes fixed on her screen. "I'm sorry but it's hopeless trying to do this in this weather. It's impossible to get any identifiable footage of numberplates in the fog, even when I try to lighten the images with our software it's still no good and I'm not sure where to go next with this. We seem to have chased all the leads I can think of already."

She glared at her screen angrily for a minute, willing the images to suddenly become decipherable, but nothing changed.

Lucas had already taken the liberty of placing Harry's whiskey decanter in the meeting room and she had had one glass earlier.

"Drink?" Lucas questioned abruptly. She nodded and he poured two glasses. She stood up to collect hers and gulped it down rapidly, and then, feeling irritated at their lack of progress, poured herself a second and began to sip more slowly. She tried not to think about Alice, to ignore the fact that it was raining now and bitterly cold out there and she hadn't dressed her in her coat today.

After a few minutes she raised her eyes from her glass and looked up at Lucas, noting for the first time his expression. "Lucas?" she prompted anxiously.

"They called," he said shortly, not even looking at her but staring into his glass.

"What did they say?" she asked, immediately concerned.

"They said they had her. They want me to pay them fifty thousand pounds. I have the money now and they said would call back at midnight with the details of an exchange."

She watched him silently, not sure what to say. She couldn't ever recall having seen him like this before. His expression was dark and there was an intensity in his eyes that made her think that whoever had taken Alice had definitely chosen the wrong man to mess with.

"I could try to trace the call when it comes in," Jo started, only to be cut off by Lucas replying abruptly. "Yes. I don't hold out a lot of hope that we'll get a location, but we can try."

Jo nodded and sipped her drink, leaning her back against the table. She looked at the clock. 11:37. Twenty three minutes to go. She had done everything she could think of to try and find Alice. And now there was nothing left to do but wait, she reflected, looking down at her glass.

She hadn't anticipated what would happen next. She could recall his hands on hers setting aside her glass and then he was standing in front of her and the world seemed to contract, to become smaller until there was only the two of then, left alone together in the quiet stillness of the night with their fears as his lips sought out her mouth.

Even though she registered somewhere in the back of her head that this was wrong, she didn't stop it. Now that it was happening she realised that there had been something between them for almost as long as she could remember which made it seem that it was always going to end like this. Like so many things in their world it had been unspoken and unacknowledged, but there was an attraction there and a sameness about their experiences which drew them together, however much they might try to resist it.

He pushes her backwards on to the table until she can feel the hard wood pressing against her back and Lucas on top of her. She watches him as he removes first his shirt and then his trousers and then her fingers are tracing the inky outline on his chest. He lets her for a minute, and then his hands are on her, tugging at her jumper and skirt impatiently. As her clothing falls to the floor and his hands tighten around her waist everything suddenly becomes so fast, so desperate between them that it was almost hard to imagine that they would ever have had the freedom to choose anything but this.

Everything is quiet and all she can hear is the rain pattering against the window pane. His hands move over her body and she is falling, sinking deeper and deeper into something it seems impossible to resist and Lucas is the cause.

When he whispers, "I want you," and presses against her, something inside of her flinches. She has heard those words before and for a second she thinks she might cry. If she can only keep still and silent perhaps the fear will recede and then she will be immune to it. She shuts her eyes and holds on to him as he enters her and when she looks up all she can see and hear is Lucas. She is not afraid any more and is left only with a curious kind of sensitivity to his voice and touch. This is Lucas and she knows now that this is different to what she remembers in her past.

His kisses burn her lips as she slides her hands up the muscular arms on either side of her and curls her fingers around his neck. He turns his head so that his mouth presses against her cheek and calls her darling and it is like they are fused together. Lucas is now moving harder, faster inside her and it seems that whatever they do or say from now onwards they will never get away from this, and she thinks that this is all there will ever be for them – no past, no future, only this moment. The hardness and heat from his body leave a trail inside her aching for him when he withdraws from her body, if only for a few seconds, and she pulls him closer again.

"Jo," he murmurs, as she feels him move inside her one last frantic time that and her breath falls from her lips in ragged gasps.

"Sweetheart," he says and his lips move to press against the whispy strands of hair that curl by her ears and she wonders why she feels suddenly sad, a hurt which grows stronger with every heartbeat. And then she knows why, because she is in love with him but he doesn't belong to her, he isn't hers. She will have to give him up, give him back to someone else. This moment is fleeting and without Lucas it would feel like a part of her was missing.

For a minute it is quiet as they lie against each other and then Lucas is leaning his long legs over the table. He stands up and reaches over and pulls her to her feet, then places one final lingering kiss on her lips, leaving her breathless and flushed. When he lets her go she sways unsteadily on her feet for a moment, before regaining her balance.

He frowns, "Are you drunk?"

"No. Yes. Maybe a little bit."

She steadies herself against the table and looks to the clock, registering the time with a shock. 12.00. They would have to be forgotten because tomorrow was already here.


	22. Chapter 22

Jo was still fiddling with the buttons on her top when Lucas' phone rang. She rushed to the computer, hitting the track button as he picked up the phone after three rings.

"Hello" he answered, the tension palpable in his voice.

"Mr North," came the reply. "You have the money I trust?"

"Yes," Lucas responded sharply, his brow furrowed as he watched the timer. 3 seconds.

"Good. Meet me outside St Paul's Cathedral at 12.30. Alone. You bring the money and we will return your niece."

Lucas took a breath. Five seconds. He had to play for time to allow the computer to fix their location, "Who are you? Why have you taken my niece?"

There was a brief pause and then the man replied, "enough talk. You know what you have to do if you want to see your niece again."

The line went dead and his eyes darted to the computer screen. Ten seconds. Not long enough. He ran his hand over his face.

He looked up to find Jo standing in front of him, the worry etched into her face. She moved her hand to rest it on his arm gently.

"Lucas?" she prompted. "Shall I call in Malcolm and Ros to help out?"

Lucas shook himself visibly and stood up. "No. We need to place a tracker on the notes," he responded, pacing across the room.

Jo nodded biting her lip.

"I will take my gun," Lucas announced. "You stay here and wait for my instructions."

...

By 3am Jo was beginning to lose hope.

Lucas had gone to St Paul's, but their plans had gone badly wrong from that point onwards. Instead of one man Lucas found himself confronted by three men. Alice had been there, apparently unharmed, but two of the men had aimed their guns at him while the third had waited for him to hand over the cash.

Lucas had been deeply irritated by their treachery, but had reluctantly handed over the cash, in the knowledge that the tracker would be used to find and trace them within a matter of hours.

He had waited until he could no longer hear the sound of footsteps in the distance before he began to talk.

"Got them?" he questioned urgently, taking into his ear.

"Got them," Jo replied, "Was Alice with them?" she asked, her voice taking on a sharp edge.

"Yes. She looked fine."

"Thank God," Jo replied, her face alighting with a smile.

"We just need to allow them a little bit of time to get away to somewhere where they're off guard and then catch up with them and get Alice back," Lucas stated.

"Yes," Jo replied, her eyes following the blue dot on her computer screen as it moved further from the Cathedral.

Thirty minutes later when the dot had stopped moving, Jo had been confident that they had found where Alice was being held.

Shortly before 2am she and Lucas had strapped on their bullet proof vests and armed themselves, then entered an address in the East End.

But the house had been empty. After searching through the rooms, they had discovered the money stashed in a bag in one of the bedroom cupboards.

They had returned to the grid in silence, it's stillness an unwelcome contrast to the busyness of Lucas' house with little Alice at home.

Once they had returned they had immediately begun to look for leads. Lucas identified the name of the home owner, and noted that he owned another house in Brighton.

He called Jo over to his station, pointing to the address and announced that he would go and check the house out.

...

Lucas had been gone two hours already and he hadn't been in contact for the past half an hour. Jo had found out everything she could about the man who owned the house they had raided earlier, Unfortunately as the man was Russian and had only been in the UK for a few months there was little to go on, and the leads she did follow took her nowhere.

The man's identity must be a clue. There must be a link to Lucas' past through the Russian man. That or the link was Louise. Or both.

She rested her head against her hand tiredly. 4:42am, her computer told her. It was so late and she hadn't slept at all. She couldn't figure it out. Pieces of the puzzle were missing but she didn't know enough to be able to put them together. Only Lucas could do that. Surely if the man was Russian there must be some connection there? And she couldn't discount Louise either, though she had found out as much as she could about her and that had revealed nothing really.

Her eyelids began to flutter as her body slumped forward so that her forehead rested on her desk.

Why hadn't Lucas said anything to her after they had been together she wondered? Of course it had been busy but he might have at least said something to her or kissed her or touched her arm a little. She thought, with a terrible sinking feeling, that he might have thought it was a mistake, that he didn't care for her but that he had only kissed her to keep his mind off what could have happened to Alice, that he had just been using her to distract himself the gravity of the situation.

A tiny tear trickled down her cheek as her eyes finally closed, her mind drifting uneasily between conscious thought and unquiet dreams. She remembered wondering briefly what Marianna might have done in this situation and then her unconscious mind took over.

She was at Lucas' apartment but he looked different. She too looked different. Her hair was long and styled into curls like a 1940s starlet and she was wearing a floral dress, and over top of that a blue cardigan.

In his uniform, Lucas looked very handsome and she watched mesmerised as he began to speak to her.

"_The Germans know about our plans to evacuate the Jews," he said sharply, pacing across the room as he spoke. _

"_I don't know how – someone in the resistance must have talked. They know that the fishing boats from other islands are planning to collect them. They know the time and the locations for the pick ups and if the fishing boats go there it will be a massacre," he stated. She met his eyes briefly and then suddenly he stopped in the middle of the room and his hand moved to slam his fist into the table. She jumped a little at his action. _

_She saw his hand move towards his breast pocket and touch it reassuringly, then he pulled out a battered piece of paper and looked at it for a long moment. _

"_What is that?" she questioned, watching him._

"_A picture," he responded shortly. "Of my wife." _

_She wondered why she felt suddenly sick at his reply. Of course he would have a wife at home. It was just something she had never considered before. _

_He sighed then returned it to his pocket and looked at her, locking her gaze. They stood opposite each other, perhaps a metre apart, silent. _

_There was no sound, except for the ticking of the clock as the hand moved slowly around the dial. _

_It seemed they had stood there for an age, when the stillness was broken by a sound from the kitchen. There was a crashing noise and then the sound of drunken laughter. _

_He swore, then looked her at, __his mind ticking over. _

"_Strip off," he announced suddenly. _

"_What?" she repeated, staring at him. _

"_Do it now, quickly. Just your dress will be fine, you can leave the rest on."_

_Frustrated by her lack of response, he barked. _"_Do it, for Christ's sake. There's no other explanation for you being here in my apartment like this so we'd better make it look authentic." _

_She could see from his expression he was deadly serious and the noises from the kitchen were becoming louder. Plausibility could be the difference between life and death. She hastily took off her cardigan and unbuttoned her dress and pulled it off over her head, and then she was standing in the middle of the lounge in only her petticoat. _

_He had hurriedly unbuttoned his jacket and was now naked from the waist up, then pulled her down on to the sofa and began to kiss her. _

"_Alexi", she could hear the yell in the kitchen. The door burst open to reveal a rotound German soldier carrying a bottle of schnaps. He proceeded to shout something across the room in German she couldn't understand but she was pretty sure it wasn't very respectful towards her. She recognised the word skirt and frau and something that sounded very much like it might translate as "you old dog." _

_The soldier watched them for a moment, grinning, until her officer looked up at him and gave him a cool stare. _

_The soldier smiled bashfully and then retreated to the door, closing it after him. _

_She heard the click of the door shutting but still he didn't release her. He kept kissing her, his hands tracing the outlines of her face and moving over her arms. Finally he broke the kiss, then took her hand and pulled her to her feet. _

_Everything and nothing seemed to happen in that second as he stood watching her. "Are you drunk?" he asked suddenly. _

_That was it she thought. Part of it was the wine making her feel so dizzy. "No. Yes. I mean maybe a little but not too drunk to remember wireless code." _

_She stood watching him, wondering what on earth had just happened between them, and why had he never told her about his wife, God damn him. _

_But there was no time to pause or reflect on what had just happened. Time was against them. _

_Soon he began to speak so rapidly she had trouble keeping up, __"We can't put the time back, the Germans will be on their guard and they'll hunt the Jews down if we try to hide them here. Our only hope is to bring forward the collection time and change the locations. Take this," he instructed, putting a piece of paper into her hands, "these are the new collection points. I want you to transmit the new time and locations. Tell them to come at 11 tonight and not at 3 tomorrow morning. Memorise the list and destroy it." _

_He continued, "There is a wireless in the woods above the village, from where you enter it is 500 metres to the South West. Follow the stream until you get to a large boulder and the wireless is about ten metres from there underneath a fallen log." _

_She listened to his instructions, repeating each word to herself silently as he said them, and nodded that she understood what she was to do. _

_"I need to stop and tell the locals about the change of plans, but then I will come and help you. You must go quickly," he finished. "The boats need to leave within the hour to get here on time."_

Soon she was running, so quickly she could hardly see where she was going. She was afraid, and the fear made her heart race. "Don't hurt them," she murmered to herself. And again, "don't hurt her."

Her eyelashes flickered and then came to rest still against her cheeks as her eyes closed firmly. She couldn't remember what it was she was afraid of, but now she was falling, sinking down deeper and deeper into the darkness. Everything had gone black, and the last thing, the only thing she remembered was that Lucas had gone and she was left alone.


	23. Chapter 23

On his way to Brighton Lucas had called in support from the armed response unit of the local Police. When he arrived at the address he found two Police cars parked down a side road several hundred metres from the address, exactly as he'd instructed.

Lucas got out of his car and stalked silently over to the vehicles, loading his gun as he did so.

"Officers," Lucas greeted the men, nodding to them. "I'm Lucas North. As you know we have a missing four year old who may be being held at number 21 York Street. According to our information the house has two exits one at the front and one at the rear. If I enter through the front with support from one of your officers, and two of your men come through from the rear we can seal off their escape. We believe we're dealing with three men who are armed."

"Fine," replied one of the older men, stepping forward to grip Lucas' hand to seal their plan. "My men need to get their gear on and then if you take the lead once you're ready we'll follow after."

...

Fifteen minutes later they were in position. "Ready?" Lucas questioned urgently, talking into his mike.

"Ready," came the reply.

There were some moments when Lucas' size and strength were a definite advantage and now was one of those times. Using one of the service's heavy assault weapons he banged down the door with a few swift strokes and then he was inside, the Police officer hot on his heels.

He quickly scanned the interior, his eyes searching for clues as to the location of the men.

Within a few second he had opened a second door and moved to the living room. There he found two men and Alice, thankfully alive and apparently unharmed. The men must have heard their entry for they had tensed and one of the men was making for his gun.

Lucas calculated that the situation could quickly escalate into a hostage scenario unless he moved quickly. He took aim and fired at the man as he came within a metre of his gun. The shots rang out – once, twice, three times.

For a second there was silence as the other man and Alice watched as he fell to the floor, blood pooling around his legs, where Lucas had hit him.

When the man standing next to him raised his eyes it was to see Lucas pointing a gun at him, his eyes narrowing with contempt.

"You – hands up. Now!"

The man complied silently, fear written all over his face.

Lucas gestured to the Police officer, "secure him," he instructed, waving his gun towards the man dismissively. He looked to Alice, and moved to pat her head briefly then turned abruptly, "And get her out of here into one of your cars. "

His expression changed rapidly and he added, "I'm going looking for the third," as a scowl settled over his face.

The Police man nodded and moved towards the kidnapper with a pair of handcuffs as Lucas left the room.

...

It was 5.13 when Jo was woken from her slumber. The sound of the phone ringing startled her from her sleep and she reached across to pick up the receiver, pushing the hair back from where it had fallen across her face as she did so.

"Hello?" she answered wearily.

"Section D we have an update on Louise Granger. After you put out an alert on her a woman using her credit card has just brought a ticket on the London to Newcastle train leaving at 5.20. The ticket wasn't booked under the name Granger but we suspect it may be the woman you're looking for using an alias."

"Yes," Jo replied, "it may be. Did you get her seat number?" she questioned.

"27B on the third carriage."

"Excellent," Jo replied. "Do you have any officers available to pull her off the train?" she asked urgently.

"We're on to it. We can send two officers in within a matter of minutes. We just wanted to confirm the go ahead with you."

"Do it," Jo affirmed. "And once you've got her bring her in to us at Thames House. There are more than a few questions I like to put to that woman," she added, simmering.

Lucas might be prepared to believe that Louise had nothing to do with Alice's disappearance but she wasn't convinced.

"Can't do it miss," came the reply.

"What?" Jo responded, startled by his reply.

"Our new policy is that we only transport suspects to the Police cells and then if you Spooks want them your people have to come and collect them from us. It's supposed to save money on transport and staff time due to the budget cuts and all. Sorry," he added apologetically.

"Well, that's the most ridiculous thing I ever...," Jo began, irritably, then stopped herself, and amended, "I see. Well I'll arrange for some of our people to come and get her once she's arrived. And thank you for your help."

She put down the phone and sighed with exasperation as she wondered what on earth the bean counters would think of next in an effort to save a few dollars.

She sat down at her desk, tapping her fingers against the surface as she wondered where Lucas was now and whether he had found Alice yet.

_..._

_Only a couple of chapters to go now. Maybe two _


	24. Chapter 24

Twenty minutes later Jo watched disapprovingly as the Grid doors swished open to reveal a rather dishevelled looking Louise in handcuffs.

Louise looked at Jo, clearly startled to find her there.

Jo smiled gratefully at the two MI5 officers who had escorted her to Thames House, "Put her in the meeting room if you please."

They complied as Louise's expression became increasingly sour. "I'm a British citizen I'll have you know and I have rights. I demand to see a lawyer."

"I'm afraid you're not dealing with the Police anymore," Jo replied surveying her coolly, as the officers seated her on a chair then moved outside to stand guard outside the meeting room. "You're dealing with MI5. And in the interests of National Security Parliament has decided that some of the rights you might ordinarily expect when dealing with the Police have been legislated away so that we have the necessary powers to deal effectively with security issues."

She paused as she moved to shut the door quietly yet firmly and then sit down opposite Louise, "which is I suppose a spot of bad luck for you perhaps but necessary given that your welfare is not my primary concern but that of a four year old girl who has been abducted by three men and whose whereabouts are now unknown."

Louise glared at her, "I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, her voice sounding self righteous. "I had nothing to do with that."

"It's apparent to me that you did have something to do with that and that you know what happened to her," Jo replied smoothly. "You're appearance only a few days before she went missing is far too coincidental for it to be mere chance."

"I think," Jo continued, leaning forward and watching Louise's face intently, "that you arranged for Alice to be abducted so that you could keep her yourself. So that by stealing someone else's child you could have your own."

"I have no idea where she is," Louise replied, thrusting her nose in the air as if she didn't care a jot. "And I think you're only questioning me because you're jealous of my relationship with Lucas. He likes me and you can't stand that thought. You're a nothing, a nobody and you're abusing your position to try to bring me down."

Jo flinched inwardly at her comments, but her face gave nothing away. She had a horrible feeling that part of what Louise was saying might be right. She was jealous of whatever was going on between Lucas and Louise. Lucas didn't love her and this past year or two had been so difficult that she still struggled with the feeling that she was nothing, that nobody cared for her or would miss her if she was gone.

She looked down at the table, taking a moment to compose herself. Louise may have managed to find her weaknesses but she couldn't let her exploit them by knowing that. She was the one in charge of this interrogation and all that mattered was that they find Alice and uncover whoever was responsible for her disappearance.

She sat back in her seat, her back straight and her eyes fixed on Louise's. Start with the truth, she thought. She had never been given much to lying. She would of course do that if her work required, but honesty had always held more appeal to her. If she started with the truth and put it together piece by piece perhaps they could break Louise and find Alice.

"I know you were involved in Alice's abduction," she started, her voice calm and collected, although that wasn't how she felt inside. " I know that we will uncover the evidence to find out how. The only question in my mind is when are you going to start talking. Will it be now or will it be later, when we've ransacked your house for clues and frozen all your assets and questioned everyone you know including your employers about your criminal history and mental health? Or will it be only at the stage where we get frustrated and have to apply a little force to get you to talk by starting with some approved interrogation techniques? And in a situation like this I imagine that we would reach that stage within a matter of hours."

"Of course," she added after a minute, "this is Britain so there are limits on the types of interrogation procedure we can use but we generally find that depriving people of food or sleep for several days tends to encourage even the most uncommunicative types to start talking. People usually find this type of approach makes it increasingly difficult to function very quickly."

Jo watched Louise swirm, and couldn't help thinking to herself bitterly that she should consider herself lucky that she was dealing with MI5 here. Even though she was of the opinion that this woman had committed a serious crime she was familiar with some types of interrogation that she wouldn't wish on anyone, even her worst enemy, who Louise quite possibly was at the moment.

She reminded herself that she couldn't let her dislike of Louise affect the way she approached this job. Alice was all that mattered. Not Louise or Lucas or whatever had gone on between them.

She let the silence hang in the air for a minute before leaning forward. "The longer this takes the more unpleasant things will become for you Louise," Jo added, speaking with a rather brisque efficiency. " In your own interests I would advise you to start talking. Now."


	25. Chapter 25

Louise watched her for a minute, her expression resentful, and then she opened her mouth.

"She's in Brighton. I wanted Alice to live with me. She's my niece just the same as she's Lucas niece. I have just as much right to her as he does," she added truculently. Jo schooled her expression to remain carefully neutral as Louise continued, "So I arranged for her to be taken from her childcare centre. I was going to go back to Newcastle, and then after a week or so they would bring her up to me and meet up there."

"Who's they?" Jo asked sharply.

"Nikolai. He had another man with him. Vitaly. I don't know their surnames. They were to take Alice and then when they returned her to me I would pay them 10,000 pounds."

Jo's expression gave nothing away. She leaned forward, a pen in her hand.

"And where exactly is Alice? Right now."

"All I know is that they were taking her back to Brighton. I don't know the exact address."

"What do you know about the Russians who have Alice?," Jo questioning, writing as she talked.

"They can be hired to perform services. I don't think they're supposed to be in Britain," she added, shrugging.

"And it didn't occur to you that it might be dangerous to hand a four year old girl into the custody of criminals for hire?", Jo questioned looking up as her eyes narrowed with irritation at Louise's lack of concern for Alice's welfare.

Louise batted away the question carelessly. "They're a bit rough, but I don't think they would hurt her. They've no reason to."

Jo watched her for a moment, then nodded slightly. If Louise's conduct over the past few days was any indication about how she would behave as a parent then Alice was much safer with Lucas. But she was beginning to be hopeful that perhaps Alice might be found alive and well in Brighton, thank God.

She stood up and walked quickly towards the door to exit the room. "Don't let her go anywhere," she instructed the officers outside, as she extracted her mobile from her pocket and dialled Lucas' number.

"Lucas," she began, "we've got Louise. She paid the Russians to take Alice and she says she's in Brighton-"

"We have her," he interrupted, "safe and well."

"Oh," Jo exclaimed, letting out a breath, "I'm so glad. Is she really ok?"

"Well, given that she's waiting in the Police van quite happily chatting to the Police officer and playing 'I spy' I'm fairly confident that she's emerged from this drama unscathed."

"Will you give her a hug from me then?," Jo asked, the relief making the words come out in a sudden rush. "I'm so looking forward to seeing her," she added.

"Of course I'll give her a hug," Lucas replied, sounding amused, then swiftly switching the conversation back to more mundane topics. "We have the Russians. We're taking them in for questioning at the local Police station," he added.

"Oh good," Jo replied.

She imagined Lucas would be quite ruthless with them and would quickly get to the bottom of the situation.

"I'll be here staying here for a couple of hours while we do that. But keep Louise there. I have some questions for her too," he added, his voice taking on a rather dangerous tone.

Lucas finished the conversation abruptly, "I have to go now."

Jo put down the phone as the line went dead.

...

She returned to the meeting room and extracted all the information from Louise she could. None of which really amounted to much. Louise swore that she didn't know anything about the Russians' attempt to extract 50,000 pounds from Lucas, and she knew very little about the Russians she had employed.

After half an hour Jo pushed back her chair, and exited the room to return to the Grid. Louise could stay locked inside the meeting room until Lucas returned.

Jo returned to her desk and surveyed the grid, noting the time. 6.34am.

So here she was, back at her old haunt once again, exhausted, but not allowed to sleep. Nothing to occupy her time but waiting. Perhaps once someone from Section D arrived on the Grid she could slip away into one of the rooms and get a little sleep until Lucas returned.

She stood up and wandered towards the balcony, opening the door to a blast of icy wind. She moved to rest against the balustrade, hugging her coat around her to protect her from the cold. Beneath her the city was in darkness, lights dotted across its expanse.

She watched the scene silently, her thoughts starting to whirl. Soon she would have to find somewhere else to live. It was ironic in a way that now that they had Alice back, and she realised how much the little girl meant to her, she would have to move on, to separate herself from Alice because of Lucas.

She had only ever intended to stay with Lucas for a little while, while she found somewhere to live. It had been an odd arrangement, she had to admit, but on the whole it had worked out reasonably well. Well, except for Louise. She wondered how Lucas felt about her now that she had been exposed as a criminal. Possibly a little burnt, maybe angry and almost certainly hurt.

And it didn't help that they had slept together, because now things would probably become almost unbearably awkward between them.

She gripped the railing tightly as she shook her head. She wouldn't think about that. She wouldn't allow herself to think about tomorrow or what the future might hold. That would only make her miserable.

Instead she imagined another time, long ago and far away.

In the back of her mind what would happen next to Marianna had been imprinted so firmly on her mind ever since she had woken to find the Police calling to say they had found Louise. She hadn't had time to write it down but it was there. Marianna would always be there with her.

If she shut her eyes tightly enough the scene would come to her.

The wind was bitter, biting at her cheeks and a misty fog hung in the air as dusk began to settle. She was running. In the half light she could see the Mediterranean stretching below her and the hills looming in front of her. In her hand she clutched a piece of paper which no one could ever see and her lips moved silently as she ran, memorising the locations to herself over and over again so that soon she wouldn't need the paper anymore. There were twelve separate bays on the list, the pick up points scattered along the shores of the island.

Soon she reached the woods, and skirted round their edges until the she came to the path that led deeper inside. She stayed on it for a hundred metres then broke away to follow the course of the stream as it wound its way into the woods. Eventually she came to a large boulder, as Marcus had said she would, and not far from that she could see a fallen log. That was the location of the wireless.

She scrambled towards the log, bracing herself as she attempted to lift it. It was heavy and at first wouldn't budge. On her third attempt she managed to shift it a metre to the side to uncover a black case in the hole underneath.

Her fingers moved quickly to remove the soil from the casing. She stood up, turning in a circle as she scanned the woods looking for an area where the signal would be strongest.

She spied a break in the canopy where light filtered through the gloom, perhaps 20 metres from her, and hurried towards it, the weight of the wireless slowing her progress to a brisk walk.

She placed the box on ground, her fingers wrestling with the locks as her hands shook. 463 lives depended on her actions. She couldn't fail them now.


	26. Chapter 26

"Jo."

The voice startled her out of her reverie, and she turned towards the safe familiarity she associated with it's owner.

"You'll catch your death out here, it's freezing," Ruth scolded.

"I like it out here. I come here to think about things," Jo replied, her eyes flickering back to watch the glow of the lights scattered across the skyline.

"Any update on Alice?" Ruth asked anxiously.

"Yes," Jo replied, her smile widening. "Lucas has her. He found her in Brighton, safe and well."

"He must be pleased. And so must you. Come inside," she added, moving to usher Jo inside.

Jo smiled. She'd forgotten how Ruth had a habit of becoming suddenly protective or her or Harry and would then start fussing very much like a mother hen.

"I do like Alice," she replied, nodding. "And I'm so pleased she'll be with Lucas now. She's a lovely girl and Louise would have ruined her, turned her into something she's not."

"He is good with her," Ruth replied, recalling how he had been with her on the day she came in to work. "She's lucky to have him. And you," she added.

"No, not me," Jo replied softly, shaking her head. "I expect I'll be moving out soon. Lucas was kind to offer me a room but it was only ever a temporary arrangement. I couldn't impose on him like that."

"It doesn't seem like Lucas thinks you're imposing to me," Ruth replied, thinking of the evening two days ago when she had entered the Grid to find Lucas sitting alone at his desk, absently holding the photograph taken of the team taken after Harry had returned safely from Russia, and stroking his thumb over Jo's image. "Quite the opposite in fact. I think he'd miss you."

And who wouldn't miss Jo once they'd had her around. She was such a sweet, thoughtful girl, kind hearted by nature, yet possessed of a rather delightful sense of humour. And Jo wasn't the type of personality that was likely to irritate after you'd been spent a while in her company, for she was never intrusive, her sensitivity making her quickly adapt her moods to those of others.

Since she'd left the Grid they'd been more than one occasion when Ruth had sat at her desk, smarting from one of Ros' acerbic comment's or Harry's displays of temper and longed for the quiet comfort of Jo's gentle smile or sympathetic ear.

Jo shook her head silently. "No. I don't think that's true."

Ruth watched her for a minute, then decided it was better not to press the issue. Whatever was going on there, and she was fairly certain there was something going on, was between the two of them. And forcing Jo into sharing her secrets might even encourage Jo to start on the topic of her and Harry, God forbid.

"You're in early," Jo started, sitting down as she changed the subject.

Ruth grimaced, "Have you seen my desk?" she questioned, pointing at the pile of files stacked on her desk. "Funny how everyone becomes a security threat when one of our American Friend's visit."

Jo watched her for a moment, not certain who she was referring to.

Ruth smiled, feeling foolish at her gaffe. Of course Jo wouldn't be aware that the US President would be visiting next month, given that this was still classified information. And what was more she shouldn't have said anything as Jo didn't even work for MI5 anymore.

She changed the topic promptly. "You must be tired. Did you stay up all night?," she asked sympathetically.

Jo nodded silently.

"Why don't you go home?" Ruth asked. "I can look after things here."

"I can't," Jo replied, shaking her head, "Lucas might call and need me to do things. And Louise is in the meeting room too. She was the one who arranged for Alice to be taken."

"Aahh," Ruth breathed, as the pieces of the story of Alice's abduction began to fall into place. "Is she locked inside?"

"Yes," Jo replied. "She's quite...," Jo paused while she sought the right word, "devious."

"Listen if Lucas calls I can do whatever needs to be done and I'll keep an eye on Louise as well," Ruth volunteered. "You can go and have a lie down."

"But you might need me to –" Jo began.

"We won't," Ruth interrupted, not waiting to hear whatever it was that they might need her for. "I'll handle it, you go and have a rest. Go on" she added, guiding her towards the little room at the far side of the grid which had a bed inside which the ever busy staff of MI5 could occasionally make use of to snatch a few hours sleep during those long nights on duty.

...

Jo didn't know what time it was when she awoke, only that it was daytime, for the sun streamed through the window of the side room she occupied. She stretched out her hand towards the light, smiling to herself as she shifted so that the warmth of the sun hit her face. She hadn't seen the sun for days and perhaps, just perhaps, this was a sign that the dark days of winter would soon be over and spring was on its way.

"Good Afternoon."

She looked up, startled to see Lucas' tall figure filling the doorway, as he lazed against the wooden frame.

"No," she replied, trying to collect her thoughts, "it can't be afternoon, surely?" she protested.

"12.21," he observed, checking his watch.

"Ohh," Jo replied, "that's bad," she added, feeling annoyed with herself for sleeping in so long.

She struggled to sit upright, "What did the Russians tell you?"

"That Louise paid them to take Alice. That they tried to make things a little more interesting by adding in their own money making scheme along the way by attempting to extract 50,000 pounds from me. That I was a devious bastard for listening to their conversation and not revealing I spoke Russian until an hour into the interrogation," he paused and grinned.

That was Lucas all right, Jo thought.

"And I've just spent the past hour with Louise too. I'm satisfied we have enough evidence to pass her over to the Police on charges of kidnapping. She should be spending several years locked up enjoying the minimal comforts of her majesty's prison system. Which is a good thing. I never could stand that woman," he added, his mouth pursued with distaste.

"You couldn't?," Jo repeated, sounding surprised. "I thought you liked her. I thought that you - you were in love with her," she added, sounding confused.

"What a ridiculous statement," Lucas exclaimed, sounding irritated by the very idea. "Louise is the last woman I would ever fall in love with. What on earth gave you that idea?"

Jo clutched the blanket to her defensively, feeling suddenly very foolish, "it was just something I saw, I thought I saw – oh never mind," she amended, trying to correct her mistake, "I must have been wrong."

"You were wrong," Lucas replied, as he finally gave up lazing against the door, and moved over to the bed, looking down over her, "and I don't think you'd thought that through properly because I couldn't very well be in love with two women at the same time," he added casually.

Jo looked up at him, startled, "you're in love?" she questioned. Her voice came out strange and shaky.

"Of course," Lucas replied. "And you're not going to tell me you don't know who with, surely Jo?," he added, smiling at her as he leaned down to take her hands in his.

She watched him for a moment, uncertain. "Me," she replied, hesitantly, "I think it's me. Maybe."

His lips brushed against hers, and the intimacy of his kiss made her blush. He came up for breath and whispered, "Of course it's you, darling. Who else would it be?"

...

Over the next few weeks, Jo found that she was happier than she could ever recall. Lucas could occasionally be dark and moody, but he was usually kind, and thoughtful and endlessly entertaining with his dry sense of humour. And she was hopelessly in love with him.

Her novel progressed. Slowly. It was true that she had nearly reached the end, but in her haste to write it she had skipped a number of scenes which weren't terribly interesting but necessary for the plot so had to go back to fill those in. And then as she was re-reading it she found herself rewriting a number of passages she found she wasn't entirely satisfied with.

But now she was truly at the end. There were only a few pages to go and, as she lay in bed one spring evening, she was anxious to make some progress and perhaps even finish it that night or the next day. But the last scenes were proving challenging.

She looked up to see Lucas enter the bedroom, casting off his robe and throwing back the sheets to climb in beside her.

"What are you doing?" he questioned casually, as he wrestled with her dressing gown which she had carelessly discarded on the bed and which had now somehow become entangled with the sheets.

She frowned and stared down at her notebook, "Writing a sex scene. Or should I say trying to write a sex scene,"

She could see his ears prick up at her comment and he grinned deviously, "I have some practical experience at that that might come in useful."

"Lucas – what are you -," she started, protesting, as his hands slipped under the covers to slither down her body. "That's very distracting."

"That is precisely the point," he replied, looking pleased with himself. "And you can't say I'm not making myself useful, I'm helping you write your scene," he replied innocently, and his hand moved to pull down the straps of her chemise. "I think it should start like this..."

...

The next morning Jo woke early and looked at Lucas' sleeping profile. He always had such a determined look about him, she thought to herself, even when he slept.

It had only just passed 7 and within an hour she expected that Alice would be tapping at the door in her pyjamas, wanting to be allowed in to share the cosyness of the bed with them. On Sunday mornings she liked to snuggle against Jo, and Lucas in a rare lazy mood, that usually resulted from making love to Jo, would tell Alice stories that Jo could see clearly defied plausibility but were apparently highly successful at entrancing four year old girls.

But this morning the house was uncharacteristically quiet and everybody slept. Jo leant over to the cabinet beside the bed, finding her pen lying on the top and then pulled open the drawer to extract her precious notebook, thumbing through the pages of notes until she came to one that was only half full.

_She tapped the message into the machine, her fingers flying. Her nerves were on edge and she jumped at the slightest sound. Suddenly a tall figure loomed out of the mist and appeared at her side. _

"_Marcus," she gasped, refusing to be distracted from her task as she concentrated on completing the transmission. _

_He stood by her side as her fingers moved frantically. After a few minutes she paused, and looked up at him helplessly. "I can't remember the name of the twelfth bay. Oh God, I can't remember the last place," she repeated, her voice sharp with desperation. _

_Marcus didn't hesitate but reeled off the list of locations in rapid fire order until she interrupted with a cry of "Yes. That's it. Tybakio." _

_She kept going, blind to anything but the need to complete her task and send the message. _

_Marianna could hear nothing but her fingers tapping as she translated the words in her head into code and the sound of her heart thumping against her chest. But in the distance Marcus could make out a noise. A sound which was so quiet it was almost imperceptible at first, but them became more familiar as it became audible. The rumble of a vehicle. _

_Marianna looked up at him, pausing for a brief moment, as she strained to listen without distraction. "The Germans are coming. Marcus they're coming," she whispered, her eyes wide with fear. _

_She was right. The Germans had commandeered all of the vehicles on the island so it could only be one of theirs. He hoped, he prayed that it was just an ordinary truck that it wasn't equipped with a device which could pick up radio transmission. "Keep going, we have to pass the message on," he instructed. "It's probably just a standard army vehicle out on nighttime operations."_

_He wasn't convinced that was the case, but he desperately hoped it was true. _

_Marianna's pulse raced and her fingers started to shake as she completed the last line of her transmission. Marcus had found the case and helped her as she hastily shoved the wireless back inside and then he shut it, pausing to fasten only one of the locks. She tried to ignore the noise as it grew louder. _

_Marcus had moved and was running towards the log and placed it in the hole, then shifted the log so that it sat on top, disguising the wireless underneath. As far as he knew there were only three wireless on the island, scattered some forty kilometres apart. If they lost the wireless they couldn't continue to pass information to the Allies and if the Germans found it they would scour the area looking for anyone who may have used it, and then turn their attention on the nearest village and begin interrogating its people. _

_He took her hand and started to run, dragging her along with him until they were deep in the forest, and far away from the location of the wireless. _

"_What do we do now?" she asked once they'd stopped, her voice ragged from the exertion. _

"_We sit and wait. If the Germans do come we can't go out into the open where they have flashlights and machine guns. This is the best place for us." _

_She didn't speak. She could still hear the rumbling and it was definitely getting louder. She was afraid. Terribly afraid. All of the stories she had heard about what the Germans did to those they captured kept running through her head. _

_He reached out and took her hands. Her fingers were icy and he warmed them between his hands. _

_Eventually she spoke, "you should go Marcus. If they find me, they'll see that I'm English and they'll never believe I'm innocent. But you – you're a Hungarian Officer as far as they know. You have the uniform and the accent and they might not suspect you." _

_He should go, he had to go. He had a chance to get out, but somehow she couldn't seem to find the courage to let go of his hand. _

"_I can't risk being taken in," Marcus replied, shaking his head, his face taking on a determined set. "Even with this uniform they could very likely interrogate me and I could reveal things under torture that could lead to the deaths of dozens of innocent lives." _

"_But they might not Marcus," she argued. She tried again, "Marcus please. Go." _

"_No," he said sharply, "its no good. This is the way it has to be. There's no place to go in any case." _

_To the south of the trees lay an impossibly sheer cliff which they could never hope to make an escape down and the land outside the trees was flat, open country with no camouflage of any sort. The sort of country that would make them easy fodder for German machine guns. _

_She fell silent for a moment, then said softly, "If the Germans do take us, I want to know what it would be like if things had been different. I want to know what – what it would be like if I had a future with you." _

_He looked at her strangely for a moment and then she saw that he understood what she meant. _

"_You want me to –" he stopped and his hand trailed down her side to pull her closer to him, "you want us to be together?"_

"_I think if I closed my eyes and you would kiss me then I could pretend that we're somewhere else, that things aren't going to end like I think they are. Then I might be happy for a little while." _

_She tried to think about that and to block out any thoughts of what might come next, not to think about the fact that she wanted it to be Marcus and not another German who did that to her. _

_She could still hear the noise and now in the distance she could make out two lights beside each other, creeping gradually closer. Headlights. _

"_Cyanide. Marcus – do you have cyanide with you?," she asked suddenly as the thought crossed her mind. _

_He nodded. "Two pills." _

_She nodded, relief written all over her face, and placed her hand on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and they fell to the ground.  
_

_He ran his hand down the front of her dress, his fingers catching at her buttons while his other hand slid up her thigh to push her skirt to her hips. This would have to be done faster than he would have liked. His hand pushed aside the silk of her underwear, and he ran his thumb over the peak of her nipple, his fingers hot against her skin - a sharp contrast to the bitter chill of the night. Her breath hung heavy in the misty air of twilight and she watched him, thinking how strange it was that she should realise only now, only at this moment, that she loved him when it was almost too late for them. _

_Then he was undoing his trousers and he pulled her to him, the hardness against her stomach making her cheeks turn pink. She ran her hand through his inky hair and wrapped her legs around his hips and his hand slid underneath her waist, tightening as he shifted his angle. _

_It was then that he heard the sound he had dreaded. Dogs, a distant sound as yet, carried far in the stillness of the evening air, but they would get closer._

_It if had just been soldiers and guns if they stayed where they were here in the trees there was a chance they could have avoided detection. But if the Germans had dogs they would hunt them down. He had seen it done before, dozens of times, and watched helplessly, unable to break his cover. The dogs never failed to find their objective. There was no point in running for the dogs were faster than they could ever move and there was no where to run to except into the open where the machine guns would stare them down._

_What would be would be, but let them at least have this moment together. H__e looked down at the girl underneath him and his arm moved to rest by her head as his thumb stroked her hair. After a moment his hips moved against hers and he pressed inside her, harder and deeper than she had anticipated. _

_His lips sought out hers and caught hers on the intake of breath. He could feel the tension in her body, the way her fingernails dug into his back._

_His eyes looked up for a moment and he registered the lights were closer now. A mile and a half perhaps, two at the most. _

_He began to move, at first slowly, carefully then with an increasing urgency. _

_This time it didn't hurt and the sensation was like nothing she'd ever felt before which built inside of her with every stroke. When she was with the Kommandant she'd had hated it but her sister who was newly married had said it was nice and she had been right after all. She closed her eyes. So this was what it was like– a sort of wishing, wanting desire for him to take her somewhere, anywhere that this could reach a natural conclusion. A burning inside of her which left her breathless, quickening her already racing pulse and drowning out everything but him. _

_He could hear that the engines had stopped now and the barking was becoming louder. He calculated the distance to the lights. 500 metres perhaps. _

_It took all his self control to remain silent and when she began to make little noises as he kept moving. He silenced her with a kiss, his lips on hers until his body stopped its frantic movements and her breathing finally slowed. _

_It was done. He belonged to her now and she belonged to him and no one could take that away from her, not even the Germans. _

_He looked up for a moment, monitoring the distance. 400 metres he calculated. _

_His pulse began to beat faster as he straightened her dress, and refastened the buttons down her front, his fingers working quickly, his movements precise. He wanted her to look dignified, peaceful. _

_She could see the lights coming closer, the dog barking becoming increasingly frenzied and was starting to babble, "You won't let them hurt me, Marcus will you? Promise me you won't let them hurt me-"_

"_Sshh," he replied, his body sheltering hers from the cold and his hands on her shoulders, "I won't let them hurt you. You'll be gone before they get to you, I promise." _

_His eyes gauged the distance of the lights as they came closer still. 300 metres now he thought._

"_Give me my pill now." _

_He removed two round white little pills from their metallic packaging. He held out one in the palm of his hand then placed it on her tongue. She bit down sharply, the aftertaste bitter in her mouth. She could see his hand move to his mouth and then her vision began to blur but she could feel Marcus' arms around her holding her tight, whispering that he loved her, that she would be safe now. _

_When the Germans came for them, chasing after their hounds, they found them sleeping peacefully, her head resting against his chest and his arms circled around her. _

_Within the hour, the Germans had rounded up the men from the village and interrogated them. Those who didn't know anything suffered, some even died for their ignorance. Eventually one man, who did know what was planned, gave in to the intolerable pain and talked. _

_Later that night the Germans were waiting for the fishing boats as they pulled into the harbour. They waited until the families were wading into the water to open fire with their machine guns, and kept firing until there was no longer any sign of life. When dawn broke the next morning the shore was still stained red with blood. _

_Of the twelve boats that visited Crete that night, eleven were captured by the Germans. But one boat, which had berthed just underneath a particularly rugged cliff did succeed in picking up a little huddle of fourteen brave souls as they waited by the shore and slipped out to sea that evening under cover of darkness and set sail for a new island of where the locals took pity of the them and gave them refuge. From there they made their way to neutral Turkey and safety from persecution. _

_Afterwards, when the war was over and Crete was liberated from German occupation the names of those who had sacrificed their lives were added to the shrines of the whitewashed Orthodox churches, the town squares and the monuments which were placed amongst the olive groves which overlooked the shores of the Mediterranean. _

_It is there, even to this day, that you will find the names of Marcus Smythe and Marianna Porter along with the names of the people of Crete, both Jewish and Orthodox, who lost their lives during those dark years. _

_And, if you look closely enough, you will see the words added by the few remaining members of the Jewish community who returned to the island, written in Hebrew and translated into Greek and finally English -_

"_Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."_

Lucas looked up from his newspaper as she put down her pen.

"Why are you crying?," he asked her, his voice puzzled, as his thumb ran down her cheek, following the tears and wiping them away gently.

"Because Marianna is dead and Marcus is dead and the Germans killed the Jews, well all except for one boatload."

"Well, why did you give them that ending if it makes you unhappy, sweetheart?," he asked, as his fingers stroked her cheek.

He was right. It was her doing that she had managed to make herself so unhappy.

Her words came out in a rush. "Because in the real world things don't always end perfectly. You know that. In our job things people don't always get what they want, even good people."

She thought of all the colleagues they had lost. All of the people for whom there would be no happy ending. Adam. Zaf. Ben. Connie. Fiona. She couldn't pretend that everything would be sunshine and roses. Perhaps she could have before she joined the service but not now. Not anymore.

And somehow, somewhere along the way she gotten mixed up with Marianna so that it felt like she was actually part of her, that perhaps part of her had died that day so long ago in Crete.

She sniffed, and then added, "and besides the books I read said the spys in Nazi occupied territory didn't survive very long. A year or two was the average life span. I didn't want my novel to be _improbable_."

She said the last word with a peculiar emphasis which suggested that she couldn't conceive of anything worse that writing an improbable novel and Lucas smiled to himself at the thought. His voice was teasing as he leant over to kiss her, "Well I might not be as dashing as Kaptain Alexander Jakob aka Marcus Smythe –" he began.

"You are," Jo protested as she ran her hands through his hair.

He paused then continued, " but you will be pleased to know that I will in future be a much better proposition for life insurance than he was."

That was true, for Lucas had announced last week that now that he had Alice to think of and had better start playing it safe he had applied for and been appointed to a vacant senior position in Section B, which dealt with a much safer, though equally interesting area of operations.

Jo clung to his arm, reminding herself that she wasn't Marianna and he wasn't Marcus. Lucas was real. He was here with her. She hadn't lost him, though her smile was still shaky from the glimpse her novel had given her of what that might feel like.

Lucas looked over at her and began, "And now that my Marianna has given up being a super spy and is now fully fledged lady novelist I think that I will keep her safe with me for bedding and wedding and happily ever aftering if that would be satisfactory with her?"

Jo giggled and nodded, "that would be satisfactory with her." He reached out to stroke her hair and she wriggled over to rest against him, threading her hand through his as she their eyes met.

His finges grasped the golden pendant that hung around her neck and he turned it over, thoughtfully.

It had been a surprise for her birthday. "I liked how you kissed me when you gave that to me," Jo said softly, smiling.

"Did you indeed?" he questioned, raising his brow.

She nodded. "Yes. You're a good kisser." Her expression indicated that she was clearly about to start flirting shamelessly with him and he knew he wouldn't be able to resist that.

He had been right. She lowered her voice and fluttered her eyelashes, and added. "I think you should kiss me like that now."

He smiled at the expression on her face. It was clearly an order.

"Well, I'm not generally given to following instructions but I think I might make an exception –" he bent over to her, only to find himself pressed aside rather unexpectedly. "Oh no!" Jo exclaimed, hastily reaching for her pen. "There's something I forgot to add," she picked up her notebook which had been rather carelessly discarded, "this part is important otherwise no one will know if I'm really done,"

"THE END," she finished with a flourish and sighed happily as Lucas' leant in towards her.

So, as with every good fairytale this story ends with a kiss.


End file.
